


Nocturne - Reveille

by FlyingPendragon



Series: Nocturne [2]
Category: Final Fantasy IX
Genre: Chattel slavery, Deception, Grief, Imprisonment, M/M, Rescue, Seduction, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:20:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 43,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingPendragon/pseuds/FlyingPendragon
Summary: Kuja wakes from certain death in the Iifa Tree to find a prison sentence waiting for him----with otherworldly conditions lurking behind it.
Relationships: Adult-Aged Vivi Ornitier/Amarant Coral, Kuja/Adelbert Steiner
Series: Nocturne [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1900582
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. I

  
  


_ "Hey! H-Hey, Captain, I found something——" _

Weimar struggled his way back up the path, panting. "C'mon, guys, get down here! Captain Steiner——I-I think you want to see this first——" He looked around, then back up...to the Alexandrian general, where she too had followed what'd been intended as a mission of secrecy. "Oh! H-H-Hi, General, I...uh...."

"Steiner is in his tent," Beatrix murmured flatly. "What did you want? You lot weren't sent out here to inspect the Iifa Tree for anything in particular, now were you?"

"Uh...Eh...N-No, we were just trying to salvage......."

"Salvage  _ what?" _

The knight gulped. "I'd rather talk to the Captain about that one, ma'am." Bad idea. Bad, bad,  _ bad _ idea. A general outranked a captain by a good lot...and here, that one eye of hers flashed dangerously. "I-I mean, General. I'd really rather talk to the Captain, General Beatrix, sir!"

She frowned and looked away. "If it would make you happy. I'm going further in."

"M-Ma'am?"

"I didn't stutter." She turned to coolly stare him down. "Unless there's something you'd rather I not find. Was it the 'something' that you thought he should see first?"

_ "WEIMAR! What's this about finding something in the deeper part of the paths?" _

He thought he'd never be happy to hear Steiner's clanking. All that armor was way too noisy. But it sure was a relief to find the General's husband ready to fix all this mess. How had Beatrix gotten here, why was she here, and what would she think when he showed Steiner a  _ very  _ important piece of information? He didn't like this. They always blamed the messenger.... "S-Sir! Yes, there's something important in the paths, sir! It's n-not for delicate eyes, sir!"

"I see." One gloved hand rose to the Captain's chin in thought. "I'm sure he means well by saying so, Beatrix. Would you please leave us to our work? (I know you've seen awful things, my dear, but I'd rather you not have to see what's so terrible. Maybe Her Highness could use your help this evening...what with Amarant and a more combative bunch coming for dinner.)"

"Tantalus again?" But her angry sigh was at least the kind that said she'd return home. "I'll see if I can keep them out of the treasure room this time.... If even one piece is missing, I'll take it back with the thief's hand attached."

Her significantly softer steps were a welcome retreat. No sooner did that brown hair disappear from the ruined depths of the tree, and Steiner's returning glance fixed on him, than Weimar's relief shifted quickly into panic. He hadn't heard a thing about Tantalus coming for dinner. He hadn't heard of anyone coming for dinner....

"Y-You lied, sir."

"Tantalus drops in whenever they please," Steiner offered with a sigh. "I'm as likely to be right as wrong. What did you find, lad, and is it really all that awful?"

"...Uh......Yeah. Someone naked in a smaller region of the tree. Male. I shouldn't say naked, because he's at least got half of his clothes on...But if General Beatrix saw this, she'd paint the inside of the Iifa Tree with blood."

"And why would she do that, Weimar?"

"Because...," The knight fitfully chewed his lip, "...I think that naked someone is  _ Kuja." _

  
  


**Nocturne - Reveille**

  
  


_ The harsh clamor of armors——a familiar sound——turned his head slowly into the vines and dust below him. _

Weimar reached the broken space first; out of habit, or maybe because of how improper it'd be for someone with such delicate skin to be exposed like this, he stripped off his tunic and gently laid it over that shredded skirt. Something silvery weakly moved.... It took him a long moment to realize that 'something' was a tail. A Genome tail; he'd been right after all.

He'd never gotten a very good look at Kuja. They'd said he was a tyrant, a despot, an opportunistic man-child with a thirst for blood.... But here, listening to soft, raspy breaths that might not come for long, Weimar found himself in thought...about how he'd found one of Dali's girls sick in a field. She'd made noises like that, and she'd been sick with pneumonia. Kuja.... Ah, shit, it'd been too long for anyone  _ else _ to be alive. And the Iifa Tree was so wet and dank here, like it'd just dripped steadily into this little warren and flooded through. Maybe his lungs had collected mold by now.

He felt for his effects and looked through. Potion. Elixir. Maybe not the Elixir...if Kuja was as murderous as they said, he'd use any magical boost to fry Weimar dead. The weakest potion might barely keep him alive. Antidote might not even be able to work. Eye drops.... No. He wasn't blinded.

"......Oh, my lad. You weren't jesting; this is awful." Slowly, gently, Steiner slid to his knees there on the ground. "Give me that Elixir. Kuja's far too weak to even use Cure right now. He's a white mage......."

"Uh, s-sir, how could a white mage control Bahamut?"

"Easily, if that mage was powerful enough to summon creatures that weren't his own. He destroyed Madain Sari. His hand at The Invincible's helm did all that. But there's so much more to it...I wouldn't have made it back if not for him. My wounds were worse than the others'; I nearly died."

Weimar bowed his head——one hand held out the precious draft. "Here. If he saved you.... He wouldn't hurt you again, would he?"

"Not unless he was too addled to see friend from foe. I've fought him at such a point...When he Tranced.... He didn't even know we'd been fighting to keep Gaia alive, the very world he loved, that Garland wanted to kill. He was on our side to begin with——and he didn't even know it. We didn't. And Mikoto......she told me Master Vivi had only been alive to meet me because Kuja revived him in the first place. He himself was not a doll until Garland did away with him." Steiner managed one hand under the Genome's back, then the other beneath his knees. "...My God. He's lighter than Garnet. He's been here too long...."

"Sir, there's no food down here. No potions. No clean water. How did he live a year and a half on  _ nothing?" _

"Sheer force of will." His lips compressed into a tight line. "That has to be the answer. And Beatrix will murder him if she sets eyes on him once; she cares not for the weak. Not anymore. After Hildagarde convinced Cid to remove the bounty on his head...after Zidane lay so long weeping over his brother.... She would never take pity on Kuja. Even Amarant has more heart than she does...."

"You're not speaking much to her, are you?"

"That's not your concern, Weimar." Steiner sighed. "But she's grown too distant and ugly inside to deal with sometimes. It's as though she's reverting to the woman I knew and hated for so long...as though my love for her had never been. Maybe it was never meant to be."

"Should I feed him, sir?" The knight stroked Kuja's cheek. "He's warm. Too warm to have been here...are we sure it isn't a trick?" Oh, that was the wrong thing to say——now the older man snatched away that bottle of Elixir, burdening Weimar with the mage's weight. Too many bones. Too little muscle and flesh.... Why did it feel like Kuja was a straw doll and not a man taller than Steiner?

"...I'm s-sorry, sir...." He felt like that girl in Dali had......just before she'd  _ died. _

  
  


**‡**

  
  


They emerged from the tree too late to fly home. Beatrix had docked the airship elsewhere or simply taken it home...leaving them without even a chocobo. The other Knights of Pluto had gone with her. 

_ "Damn that Beatrix!"  _ Steiner burst, before he could stop himself. Too familiar to his heart. Weimar had been right to ask if they had anything between them anymore...a girl-hound like himself was the right sort of man to see things for what they were, now and then. "I wish this did not feel like her typical behavior.... She's angry that I asked her to leave. She's dominating the accords once again. Strategic——I think she knows Kuja was down there."

"She took the airship? She  _ wants _ him to die of exposure, doesn't she?!"

"Weimar, please. He can hear you. I'm quite certain of that...." In his arms, covered not only by the lad's tunic but his own, the Genome shivered with what was certainly fever and worse. "...Oh, we have to go somewhere, and the nearest I can think of is Conde Petie. If we're fortunate, they'll never have heard of Kuja." Those Dwarves were so removed from all of it, there lay the possibility of one neutral zone.... "I'd bring him to Oeilvert if I thought I could keep him safe from everyone, including himself...."

"We have to get up there," Weimar sadly observed. "Think we can make it if we wrap him in the tent and walk all night?"

Steiner turned to regard his lone knight. "...You've changed your tune hard these past few hours, lad. Tell me why...You looked like you were going to weep when I handed him over to you. Have you seen such an unfortunate situation, and was it as dire as this one looks to be?"

"Sir, I...I flew to Dali once, for a vacation. The thought of getting away was great until it turned out they'd been suffering so many months of rain.... Monsoons, they said. One freak storm after another is what it looked like. Trees had been knocked down. This was before I'd even heard of Kuja, just after the king died...." Weimar frowned, his lip wobbling like a child's. "...I found a girl out there, one of their farm workers. She had been caught in the storm and couldn't get back in. I did my best, I took her to the inn, b-but...."

"But?" He knew bad news when he heard it.

"But she died," Weimar burst. "She died of pneumonia. And she was as light and limp as Kuja is now, just before she did. All bones. Spine sagging weakly just like his. He's dying, Captain. He's going to die.... A-And I thought, when I found her, I thought if I'd gotten there soon enough, I could've saved her...We have to wrap him in the tent and run. We have to hurry, we've got to get him there tonight...."

Those breaths sounded so very still, even with the Elixir he'd managed to swallow. "...I fear you're right, lad."


	2. II

_ "Help us——! Please!" _

"Ah'm comin', lad, gimme a mite...." Opening the door nearly got Wendy knocked down. "Nao just wai' a moment! Y'can't come in here wi'out sayin' the greetin' o'the Dwarves!"

"Rally-ho," the fat man in front of the little one moaned. "You too, lad."

"R-Rally-ho?" Good enough. Sounded like that little boy she'd seen so long ago...two years, wasn't it? Aye, two years since she'd caught eyes with the bairn of those pointy-hatted fellows. Cute little thing. 

She laid hands on hips. "Nao what's goin' on, at this time o'night? Doon't ya know we're sleepin'?"

"Please, milady." That big fellow had some couth, he did. "Please, we need help. You remember Master Vivi. The 'Pyntie-Het' child in blue and green? This is the man who made him. This is the man who made all of those 'Pyntie-Hets'. He's gravely ill. We need room and board——I dare not let him freeze out there——"

Barely the word  _ Pyntie-Het _ had reached her ears before she'd made a grab for her key. "Come on, then. Poor man needs some boiled owl...Mebbe oglop stew instead if he can't open his mouth up...."

"Oglop... _ s-stew?" _ That stutter hadn't come from the boy.

"Aye, we take a great mallet and smash the ugly beasties under it! Then we drain the oil for other thin's besides stew, an the meat goes in't a pot. Pumpkin mash an dead peppers too, good quantity of elixir...A fat owl egg, a bit o' dendrobium pollen, all sorts o' fine thin's. Then we boil it up and et!" Rushing them down the hall to her room was quick; the clanging noise he made was almost like a bunch of pans. "An'ye get t'take off that nasty noisy armor. Unless we find a synthesist, ya doon't need armor in here anyway. Goona give th'poor boy a headache."

He frowned. Fine thing when he hadn't smiled once. "I hadn't thought of that. I'm probably hurting Kuja's ears far worse than Weimar is."

"Kuja? Ah, the boy who near ended th'world an got stuck in the tree. Nebber thought he made those Pyntie-Hets. But wi' them aroound, we have plenty o'trade. Fine commerce. An' good company for some time...but lately they've no come roond anymore." She saddened; they'd heard everything from death to disinterest, and a word of finality would be good here. Maybe he knew.

"I'm afraid they've all fallen to sleep." Some sleep. Probably dead. "The permanent kind."

Wendy sighed there. "An it's this perman'nt sleep ya want t'avoid wi' this poor fellow. Lemme have a look at 'im first; I like t'know the faces of men I'm helpin' feed." She shooed them into the room, passing them by to pull away the warmest of the beds' covers. "Come oon. Lay'im doon here."

They'd wrapped whoever this 'Kuja' was in a tent, two tunics....

That face. She knew that soft face——she'd let a young lad with it, in a white mage's robe, sleep here ages ago. The boy who'd gone with Father David had the same one, but shorter. "...Ohhhh. This boy. I know this boy...I remember sebben years ago I let 'im sleep in this very bed. He was wearin' different thin's, o'course.... Nao why're y'coverin him up like that? Ah'm a woman. Ah can help y'fix anythin' he's——" Maybe she should've left that last tunic on. "Oh. Oh dear. Poor boy's filthy. All covered in grime.... You stay here. Ah'm goin t'get ya some cloth an'a warm pail. Soap too. Not th'prettiest thin, just oglop oil an' tallow.... If ye'll excuse me." Quickly she retreated from the room, closing the door.

She'd seen worse, really, but she was a  _ married _ woman. She had no business whatsoever looking at a young man's unmentionables.

  
  


**‡**

  
  


"She left in a hurry," Weimar observed. "And it doesn't really look like Kuja's that dirty...."

Steiner shook his head wearily. "No, he's just a stranger. One whose codpiece happened to tear and expose a part of him no otherwise-coupled woman should bother with. She's almost a nurse with her good bedside manner, but I'd really rather bathe him myself.... After all, when you lads have been ill, I've managed to help. We're all men in this room."

"Yeah, but he looks like a girl." Those words sounded dreamy around the edges. "A really pretty girl.... Think that makeup's going to come off easy?"

One thick finger gently swiped over Kuja's eyes, then his lips. "It's not cosmetic. Something he chose years ago, I'd wager, to make himself look different from the others. All this time, he didn't want to be a Genome. But his hair is at least a natural kind of silver." Carefully he tugged back the thick quilt, exposing in safe straits the form that'd managed to survive death and destruction of several kinds now.

"Ah'm here!" The door quickly opened and closed, footsteps shuffling away.

"Oh! Captain, she made us food!" Weimar turned to retrieve whatever else the kindly Dwarf had left, while for his part, Steiner didn't want to risk leaving his ward alone. Those words...about the girl in Dali.... Another maid he'd met himself, Slai, who'd allowed him to assist her in their kitchen...All those Dali women had charm and innocence in their own little ways, but here was an unfortunate he never thought he'd help, or even want to.

Kuja had begun those factories in Dali. That entire time, they'd known what Steiner had to find out later. "Kuja, were you ever entranced by a beguiling little woman there? Or was the only girl who beguiled you Garnet herself——the canary you mercifully laid to sleep, rather than destroy? You never laid a hand on Garnet, or Freya. Not directly. When you had to hit anyone, they were only damaged with the rest of us. You were truly chivalrous...until your mind departed you."

"Sir, here's the water. And cloths."

"Thank you, Weimar. How is that oglop stew?" If the beasties were going to be killed here, he might as well avail himself of their hospitality. It did smell rather divine.

"Oh! It's amazing. You'd never guess it was made of bugs at all. There's three bowls here...one for Kuja. Think he'll eat it?"

"After that long in the dark, lad, I doubt he could. But I'll do my best to see he does." Most of that Elixir had ended up on his clothes, on the ground, or simply coming back up to leave a mess in his hair. Turning away for just a moment, Steiner stripped helmet, cuirass, mail, boots, belt, sword, everything he could spare...sitting there in breeches and naught else, sweltering while Kuja froze. Either that, or his fever was climbing.

One small hand touched his face. "H-He's burning up...."

"I can tell. If only Master Vivi were here...Blizzard Sword would at least help his case." But this water would. Carefully he dipped a cloth and let it soak——he had to get the mage out of all that finery. Everything they'd ruined, and he'd shredded near to bits with Trance. The pauldrons had survived, as had his bracers...Half of his sleeves, one boot and stocking. The codpiece had only broken one belt, but it'd been enough to slide the whole thing halfway down one thigh. And though nudity would weaken any other man, somehow Steiner saw more strength in that porcelain frame now than he had before.

The Kuja who'd rained death on Brahne had been supple, well-fed, almost curvy. But here those bones jutted out——hips, ribcage, knees, elbows, wrists.... His collarbones could balance a full bottle of Ether. His tail showed the knobs of vertebrae beneath it. And his fingers might fit through a keyhole now.

"I promise...," He leaned forward to press his lips to Kuja's forehead, "I will not let you die."

  
  


**‡**

  
  


He showed more signs of life a week later.

Steiner sat bathing him from yet another sweaty fever—the lad perspired more than the human himself did—when weakly shaking fingers closed over his wrist. Kuja might not know what he was doing, he might be in a dizzy stupor, but he grasped Steiner's wrist...and mumbled something. Those words were quite unclear, but he spoke.

"I'm very glad to hear your voice at last." He chose his words carefully; he didn't want to upset the Genome in his delicate state. "We all missed you." How he wished he could convince everyone to tell Kuja the same. He didn't even know whether Freya and the others would defend his choice to rescue their former enemy. Surely they'd suspect Kuja of having some ulterior motive, though the young man was unconscious, comatose, might not even live....

"Ah see he's near ready to wake."

"I wouldn't know, Wendy. I fear things may be hard for a while." Steiner shook his head. "He's cold every night. He shivers; I'm afraid to leave him alone, but I know I might hurt him even by lying beside him."

"He's a white mage, aye?" She had a good point. The man had saved himself from their attacks time and time again; he'd known what they could do, and he'd prepared accordingly. Even from moment to moment, he'd dominated their battles..., and he hadn't  _ lost _ the final skirmish that'd trapped him in the Iifa Tree.

If not for Kuja, they'd all have died. The man knew more white magic, more of any magic, than the eight of them combined.

Another grab to his wrist. The Genome was muttering again, something harder; his skin began to glow briefly and then stilled. 

"...Oh my Lord. He just cast Cure."

"Or somethin' like that," Wendy agreed. "Ah'll get him some Ether; he'll need it soon enough."

Terrible idea. Kuja racked with something internal——a hard, horrible spasm ripped through his frame. It hadn't happened before; his consciousness, enough to grapple with what ailed him, had thrust him further in. 

"Kuja, please. Don't move. Don't.... Wendy, please bring me potions. Not Elixir, not Ether; both or either of them could make him worse." The mage seized beneath them, jaw locked, tears threading from his tightly closed eyes....

"It'll get worse quickly." She frowned. "Ah doon't see thin's like this often, and they nebber end well." Turning around, she headed away down the open room, murmuring behind her, "Don't be surprised if he dies, man. He might nebber wake up completely.... Somethin' in his head needs out of 'im. Nao is ma ken."

Steiner sat silent at her words——only watched as Kuja's bodily madness faded from him, and he stilled once more. 

None had thought the Genome would live through that final battle to begin with. They'd hoped he'd die...but to be faced with this, to see him lying helpless in a bed and know the strong, defiant, effeminate tyrant might never breathe again.... After he'd saved their lives from Necron, though he'd  _ summoned _ it to destroy everything, given each of them new chance at days they would've never had again.... This was truly insurmountable. The human couldn't come to grips with it, and likely never would.

Fears be damned. Carefully he pulled back the covers, all the way, revealing the starved though gentle curves of a man whose convictions had been harder than steel. 

"You breathed new life into me, Kuja," he whispered, a tight lump forming in his throat. "I could never repay you for such a thing.... Even though Beatrix has become a hateful, angry person once more, worse when you're mentioned, I need you...."

_ I need you. _ He hadn't meant to say those words, but here......They fit. All too well.

Aching inside, more than he could bear, he slid his fingers gently down Kuja's side——over his ribs, continuing to his concave belly. The mage stirred beneath his hand; long silvery lashes fluttered, like butterflies in short repose over the loveliest of flowers. His breath caught in his throat at the sight...he dared not pass from this world until he saw those water-pale eyes open, even if only for the last time.

Weakly that face crinkled. Pain. Agony, barely expressible in words, and never by someone with deeply-injured brains. Hopefully Kuja wasn't so moribund. Steiner leaned forward, pressed his lips to the mage's forehead...He couldn't tell anyone the lad was here, until he could be sure of whom was safe. For certain, his wife was not, and with their mutual separation—he couldn't abide those angry outbursts of hers, and she couldn't tolerate compassion she saw as weakness—he could never,  _ never _ let her learn Kuja was alive.

"Don't die," Steiner implored. "I need you. You must remain alive...Without you, I'd never have had a chance...."

That form moved below him. Thank the gods he'd taken off his armor.... Here was a naked, fragile man, a despot with the mind of a child, who'd always had what he wanted by force or coercion. And Steiner wanted to shelter him from the world, needed to preserve him from those who would destroy the light behind his eyes.... Even as it seemed to be ebbing away. What could he do? How could he act best in all of this?

"...I need to contact Hildagarde Fabool." The answer was detrimentally simple.


	3. III

Answers by moogle. A nice way to contact someone. Except when the only moogle he could find was Artemicion, and that creature had no less caprice than Kuja himself. Steiner had a speech prepared for when the thing finally showed up.... And yet the sight of those shiny wings tore all of that away. That little pest flew right in, landed on the mage's chest.

"Master! Master! A-A-Are y-you all right?"

"'Master'?" This had never been expected. It looked as though Artemicion had some explaining to do before he flew off to Hilda, if he managed to find Lindblum at all. "You need to land more gently——," He shook a finger in the moogle's face, "or don't land at all! Kuja is delicate. He's barely even conscious, and he certainly can't breathe as well as you think he can. He was trapped in that tree the entire damned time! Didn't you know that?!"

"...Yeah," was the only reply.

"Wh-What?! You knew he was in there? Why didn't you tell anyone?! What was your reason for holding all of this back? Why in the world would you let something so detrimental happen to him?" Right about now, he'd break that little thing in half, if not for the Beatrigian rage it would unleash.

Tiny wings flapped slowly, carrying the indolent moogle away from his lovely, hitherto-unknown master. 

"...Because he told me to."

Slowly his shaking fists stilled. He shook his head, unbelieving, unable to register so much grief.

"Kuja...t-told you to leave him in the tree...." How could this be so? After saving their lives, he'd wanted nothing more than to be left alone to die? After his entire life had been spent wanting to live longer than the candle flame Garland had intended it to be.... He'd just wanted to die——to fade away into obscurity? To be forgotten? And here Steiner was, sheltering him, soothing him, trying to keep such a beautiful soul from the unlovely spectre at his door.... "I wager you were not the first soul he did so for."

"Nah. He told Zidane. Shortly after you all left.... Why is he out of the tree? You don't listen to orders?"

He frowned sadly; he'd done exactly that. Ignored an order he hadn't known had been given...taken someone out of a foul, dank depth to let them die in the fresh air. Kuja was indeed too close to death. He teetered on a precipice——it might be too late for him, but Steiner was going to try. For the sake of love, of happiness.... For a man who'd never been given the chance to be a child, he would ignore orders again...he might've done so when Brahne had ordered Garnet's return, but he'd defied a truly wicked order.

These...they were wicked in ways their maker could not know of. To allow such tenacious beauty to fade away forever was an unconscionable act, one he would never be able to excuse. 

"Don't tell me a thing about orders, Artemicion," he whispered. "Get yourself to Hildagarde Fabool, and get there now. Contact whomever she commands you to; she alone is far enough from this, and yet close enough to Kuja, to give him the aid he needs. He cannot stay in Conde Petie for much longer...he needs Lindblum's protection from Beatrix. She will return here, as soon as she learns I'm not in Alexandria."

"Beatrix'll kill him?!"

"She tried once," Steiner revealed. "Hit him with Climhazzard. The only thing it did was singe his feathers, and he laughed like a madman for thirteen hours straight, while he tore up his room in an ether-fueled delirium I've seen from no one else before or since."

The moogle sagged in his entirety. He knew what the score entailed now, and how badly it could get if he acted his part poorly. "...Do you think he's gonna live, Rusty?"

_ "...A-Adelbert Steiner,"  _ that shaky feminine tremolo returned below them,  _ "of th-the Knights of P......." _

As quickly as it came, it passed out of the room. Kuja lay still once more...but one thought came to the human where he knelt. Not that the mage had spoke coherently, rebutting something he heard and didn't like——but what he'd said. 

"He knows my name. Artemicion, he knows my first name.... I never told him. Not once. I don't know that I even spoke to him before he left Alexandria, t-to start his rebellion.... I don't think I said a word to him. But I know I never introduced myself."

He hadn't needed to. Kuja knew enough about everyone...That was how long he had watched them, how long he'd been waiting in the wings. He'd had eyes on Zidane, Vivi, Garnet, or all of them at once, and in the process had learned everything he needed to be the perfect enemy.

And, the knight realized, heart stuttering in his chest, the perfect friend. Lover. Anything. Whatever someone needed of the Genome, he could've done and excelled at. Any task he'd've been asked to do, any spell he'd've been ordered to use.... Kuja was the perfect individual, in any respect whatsoever. This had been how he'd endeared himself to Brahne, to so many diplomats, and managed to whisk Hildagarde away without a struggle. It was how Steiner had grown a new fondness for the lad, how Garnet looked away out of respect or something else when he'd spoken of Kuja...and Zidane had nearly canonized his older brother.

"His brain is struggling for life, lad. Please. Get to Lindblum. Find Hildagarde. Anyone she asks for, find them as well. I cannot keep him alive with only my care...I don't know what's wrong with him."

"...Y-Yeah."

Steiner turned back to the bed. "Be swift about your tasks. Kuja's life hinges on how fast you can get to Lindblum.... Let nothing bar you from this mission, for if he dies, I shall hold this as a reason. You will be responsible in many ways for what happens to him——He's depending on you."

The window quickly slammed shut. He didn't look away from the frail form in that bed, wouldn't leave that soft pallet for even a moment longer than he had to.

"...You knew my name...." Carefully, gently, he stroked Kuja's feathers upward and away from his eyes. "In our conflicts, your invisible presence in the palace, my ignominy compared to someone like you.... You cared enough for me to learn my name. I don't know how to bear such a thing."

Ah! His lashes fluttered as they had earlier that day. Kuja's consciousness improved when one spoke to him, but not enough to rouse him from his rest. "You're in Conde Petie.... It's been over a week since I found you in the Iifa Tree. I wish I could do more. The brief moments you were conscious enough to aid yourself, your brain's condition worsened. Something in your head is making this situation far direr than it should be......but it may have kept you alive this long, as well. I shudder to think what may be afflicting you."

Kuja weakly gasped. Steiner blinked, looking down; he'd accidentally leaned on one slender arm. "You knew so much about me...you hadn't even given me a clue. You never spoke to me unless it was in the dastard heart of battle. Perhaps it's time I learned more about you...."

He barely moved there. The knight cradled his head in both hands, looking at his delicate features, turning him this way and that. Aside from a dense, matted patch of hair near the base of his neck, nothing seemed wrong...and if his skull had cracked, he'd already healed it. "Garland treated you very poorly," he murmured, "and he never knew the potential you had. The possibility of greatness burns hard in your bones, Kuja. If it takes me a hundred nights, a thousand, I will see that you're well.... Even if you go as mad and eccentric as you were before, even if you destroy me...I just want to see you smile again."

"I wish...," He tried to find his voice, "I wish I could speak with you like a friend. Surely, I can speak with you myself, but it's more like conversing with a wall. I just...I yearn to watch you sleep and know you'll wake and stretch for the sun. I'd love to introduce you to gysahl pickles. I need to know how your armor stayed immaculate for so long. Where did you even acquire it? Did you have a synthesist make your clothes——or did you craft them yourself? I saw so many things in your palace that couldn't be found anywhere else...."

The window blew open behind them. Some evil storm was rising over the Forgotten Continent, and it'd take more than the lands below it into death. He turned, only for a moment——stare fixing on those splintered shutters. He couldn't keep them closed. And the bed shook hard with the Genome's spastic response.... Cold. Pain. Anguish. Despair. So many things directly radiated from that bleak, helpless frame.

No way to avoid it. Slowly he lifted Kuja, held him close; either he shared the bed with his ward, or they'd both freeze in the ugliest of weather. "Don't worry, lad. I shall keep you warm."

He shivered still, but his body was so like a furnace. So hot......marvelously soft. His thin limbs barely moved in Steiner's hold; the human settled into the pallet, buried himself as deep as he could, back-first. And aiding the Genome onto his chest, head between his neck and shoulder—— Perfection itself.

Only a shame he might not live long enough for Hilda to help him.


	4. IV

He'd dozed into a deep sleep——Someone shook him. Hard.

_ "Hey, Rusty, get the hell up!" _

...Not Zidane. Someone softer murmured behind that roughened male voice, also male. And perhaps a third was speaking to a fourth——He barely knew. Steiner ground his fist into his eyelids, rising to a face that stank of gysahl ale. 

"Amarant Coral. How in blazes did you get here?!"

"Saw that fat little dandy flyin' off and figured I'd see where he came from." The far taller human helped him up, to sit where Kuja hadn't stirred from his chest. He still wore breeches; the mage didn't. "I see. Well, hell, you saved me a trip. I wanted to find out what happened to him too."

"You aren't to harm him!" Those Kaiser Knuckles could rip Kuja's ribcage open. "You'll deal with me before you break a  _ feather _ from his head!"

"Calm down." The bladed glove dropped at his feet; he kicked it away. "I'm not here to kill the kid. I was hoping I could do somethin' to save him. You think Chakra would help even a bit? I mean, it isn't the best or the brightest of white magic, but it does more than ya think."

Steiner sadly shook his head. "Kuja was conscious enough to cast Cure at one point, and it sent him flying deeper into the megrims he's in right now. If you could do anything, it'd be sorely needed; he requires some form of aid I can't give him. Curaga Sword would be an amazing boon if he were conscious enough to cast his own magic on my weapon."

"Yeah, but _Kuja's_ power would melt it in half. He's a lot stronger than Vivi. Like comparing a pebble to a boulder."

"Or a grain of sand to that same boulder," he murmured. "I've spent these days with him and that's my thought on the matter. Kuja mastered whatever magic he happened to find interesting. Blue magic would be no struggle. The very direst of black magic, of summons...He could take Alexander back from the dark and plant it in his own frame."

"Might help," Amarant agreed. "But it'd have to be done from the same place he's in now. Whatever's wrong with him has to be solved.... Hey, Freya! You wanna get over here and give him some Reis's Wind first? If he's nearly dead, using Chakra on him could kill me." That much no one was stupid enough to doubt. The mage had been surviving on stale air, and perhaps Iifa's leavings, for over eighteen months....

Steiner had been correct. That softer male turned out to be Sir Fratley——carefully he lifted Kuja away from the knight's chest, with a fair quantity of bedding. Swathed and weak, the Genome offered no resistance.... Not that he really could. 

"Here you are, Silverlocks. My lady will assist." Even with staid deportment, the man looked like he would cry. "We shan't allow anything to befall you that we do not cause."

"Fratley.... He looks terrible." A tenderness Steiner hadn't seen in the Burmecian knight passed over her face. "So many in those days who looked like this...They didn't live. How are we to know he will? Might it not be more merciful to end his pain?"

Mercy. Even though she spoke of killing him, Freya also did so for mercy's sake. She touched his forehead, whispered something low into his ear——something that made him shift and struggle. Consciousness. And an agonized cry in the blankets.... The sound drew tears into her eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Steiner. We'll do what we can to revive him."

What had passed between them might've encouraged her. She laid hands on him, her voice soft and droning...his hair lifted with green, skin reclaiming a nearly imperceptible brightness. "Amarant, we're going to need to bolster you with Elixir. He's terribly wounded...That or introduce it to him in an uncomfortable manner, one Steiner would have to assist with."

"I'll do it." Behind them, that fourth voice revealed itself.

Mikoto. The third of the Genomes meant to destroy Gaia, and the one who might've taken something from Terra, stepped slowly, carefully forward to look at her older brother. "...I learned something from Garland's books. It took me some time to cope with. It's dreadfully revealing, about more than us. Mainly, Kuja and how he was transformed from one of us into the wholly unique creature he became. Captain, I know what's inside him."

"Y-You do?"

"Yes." What passed for sadness clung to her features. "I might say first that Kuja never looked like we do. He was never quite the same as we are...because he was the first Genome. In our entirety——the first of Garland's primordial experiments to breathe. He took Kuja, bound him to that table.... He looks so soft and fragile because he spent a Terran century chained there. Every day our master would inspect him, alter him in some way.... Until he was ready to speak, and move, and resisted as any animal would. Then...." She ventured a hand there to his face, held it with her comparatively small fingers. 

"Then? What happened?" Freya was only the first to speak; they all wondered.

Her voice flattened even more. "He harvested usable DNA from Kuja. Cells, the only semblance of which could produce life...He experimented with sources of gestation. The light in Bran Bal, produced by a suspended-gravity form of water, was what he eventually settled on. The water itself is a recombinant fluid to our race——If someone's thrown into it, drowned, their best course of action is not to emerge. When Kuja was, and did, he naturally reproduced, in the only way we could." 

The Genome's cognitively dissonant pelvis made sense now. "So you and Zidane, the others, you are his children."

She shook her head. "Vivi is."

Steiner's mouth dropped open. "...Master Vivi was a Genome...." How strange that they'd never known. Vivi didn't take off his clothes or hat, hadn't ever made the effort...He sat oddly, as though there'd been a tail he didn't wish to break. He fell forward, not backward. He tripped, with the ungainly movement one would have if they couldn't use anything on their frame as a rudder. And his hat was one of the most sensitive pieces of clothing anyone owned......He screamed when anyone tried to remove it.

And Steiner was thinking of him in the present tense, as though he still lived.

"The lads are his natural children, then.... If he was a Genome, falling into the water when we were on Terra would've made his body start the process. But we thought he was a doll." He could barely process this one. "How strange that Kuja didn't tell him. Or pretended not to know him for so long."

"Would you want your child to learn of his own terrible origins? Would you want someone who tortured you to have any ability to do so to a creature you'd made, seen, and loved?"

The lot shook their heads. Mikoto had a very good point.

"I rebut to your first assumption of him that you had no idea who he was," she continued. "His saving you was not an uncharacteristic act. Most of the time Kuja was on this planet, he was under the influence of a heavy, consuming evil..., something that opiated him and caused teratoform. Trance Kuja is a fallacy; you have seen Zidane in teratoform, the kind you call Trance. How different from that does Kuja look now?"

"Are you telling us he exists in  _ organic _ Trance?" Freya's maw dropped open. "You cannot be serious. He was created in a state of heightened abilities.... Oh, Mikoto. He didn't even know why he couldn't Trance——He had no idea he already had, and was."

"That's the problem," she said quietly. "Kuja was naïve. He's still naïve. He's been so this whole time. He found Gaia because in an innocent state, he went wandering off. Inside of him, he's still the juvenile offspring of some prehistoric creature. His forebrain can't fully develop, and he never existed in the child form we did. He was an adult from his first day. That was why Garland was able to create us.... He treated Kuja like a self-dividing plant, or perhaps a parasitic worm. We are not his children. We're his clones; Zidane's only briefly touched on Dyne meditation, and the true form of our race. You might consider Kuja the queen of a great and terrible colony, one that doesn't even know its potential. He's not the only deluded Genome in it."

They turned to look at Steiner, and the fact his face hadn't changed by much. "Well, Captain? You look as though this doesn't surprise you." Mikoto passed Kuja to stand in front of the human. "You knew he wasn't aware of it. And you probably know we're unaware of ourselves as well.... Like you're watching innocent children play in a yard. How much did you come to believe about Kuja?"

"He's truly—," His voice threatened to break, "blameless for most of his actions. He doesn't comprehend what he did, and even when he did, he tried to tear himself away from the power in his hands, many times. I saw conflict in his eyes, dissociation. Pain. The only thing he ever wanted to do was exist in a place that wouldn't try to kill him. And we might never be able to give that to him."

"I will destroy whatever threatens him," she returned. "I'm learning white magic——Slowly, because the process is hard even when you aren't human. Kuja could give me the knowledge in an instant, but without first mastering the powers I gained, I'd slay myself. He came close to death at his own hand more than once on Terra. Did you know he can't even swim?"

"If I was drowned in an aquifer of trembling blue light, I think I'd be the very same."

She frowned. "Captain, I want to know what your intentions are for Kuja. What do you yourself want to do for him? You don't look as though you want to leave him to me, nor do you seem divested of emotion for him."

"Sayin' it like he's in love with him, li'l girl." Amarant reached one enormous hand to lift Mikoto over his shoulder. "You need to take a seat somewhere and let him work——Hell, let us work. Do me a solid and feed me Elixir if I start flagging; I'm gonna throw mountains of Chakra into him and try to provide some Essence of Coral. It'll help more than you think."

Fratley bore Kuja back to the bed, covered him as best he could. "This will take some time, won't it?"

"No." Mikoto frowned. "Turn him over. Someone has to give him Elixir first, in a way he can't reject...." The bleak looks on everyone's faces told Steiner it wasn't going to be easy. "You hold him, Captain, and I'll administer."

"Gonna shove a bottle up his ass?" Amarant set her on her feet and turned around. "I'm not watchin' this." 

Out of respect, or to preserve some of the mage's dignity, Freya and Fratley turned as well. The three proceeded to the window, probably to find some way to keep that wind away from Kuja. 

Steiner settled himself onto the bed, near the pillows; the Genome's head would have to be in his lap, or on his upper thighs. A pillow there separated man from lad...and now, he gently lifted his ward, turned him.

"You'll be all right," he murmured patiently to Kuja. "Just rest here, with me."

_ "I'm here, Adelbert——I assume you needed something." _

He didn't turn. Not much ceremony was wanted or necessary, when the mage's bare nates were upturned for Mikoto's small hands and a bottle of Elixir. "Lady Hildagarde, I fear he may be dying."

"If he was going to die, he would've done so in the three days you both slept. You've been as tired as he is, working yourself over like this." Cid's wife said little else as small talk...though the idea that he had slept three days, when he could barely rest six hours without waking up, began to ravel his mind somewhat. "Dear, let me help you with that. You'll want to make certain that bottle doesn't rend him or become stuck.... They have the habit of sealing into tight spaces like this."

What a sad thing that she knew it for certain. As a healer, she might've seen well-meant acts come to foul ends. "No-no. You must cap it with your finger, hold it there.... And when you remove it, your fingertip has to cover the bottle's mouth to break the suction. Hold on."

A small, pained hiss seeped into the pillow; Hilda's fingers were slightly larger than Mikoto's. 

"You'll be all right," the captain soothed. "As soon as it takes effect, we can find out what's in your brain.... Mikoto is a bit busy at the moment; I don't imagine she'd be able to enlighten us just yet."

"The Iifa Tree's only seed."

What an unlovely answer. Garland had seen fit to insinuate a parasite like the Iifa Tree into his own creation? Then that explained why it'd kept him alive for so long. Until the seed germinated, Kuja had to be kept as some kind of pristine soil——

Steiner turned harshly left; vomit streamed between his fingers. "M——My God," he managed, "Kuja was some kind of flowerpot for that bastard tree.... Food for the mother plant while the infant b... _ broke through his brain......." _

Mikoto's face showed no more emotion than it had the day he met her. "Precisely."

No one spoke. The four clustered around Hilda where she administered both tallow and Elixir to their suffering friend. "Now, child, look there...If you hold it closed on exit...." From the gasp Steiner himself barely heard, it'd been successful. "No suction, and the patient will be better for your efforts. His fever's already coming down. He should be conscious within the hour."

Would anyone be prepared for that? Uncomfortable glances told Steiner that probably only two people were.

Kuja himself might be hard-pressed to get away from the room when he woke.


	5. V

Hours passed. Hilda had excused herself, likely to find some way to cope with the idea of her abductor waking and doing something he might regret. Steiner hadn't moved——he wouldn't, and instead of staggering amounts of discomfort he felt nothing but relief. Kuja was alive, and if they could remove that seed, he'd be fine for some time. He might even outlive this Gaian Age; there'd been eight before this one.

He cradled Kuja there to his chest, feeling that weakened body revive in his arms. Through Wendy's shrewd work, every piece of the mage's ensemble had been repaired——his codpiece had been tended to separately, by a singleton Dwarf in her company who'd made many an interesting comment about the man who wore it. 

"I can't believe you're alive, lad. You'll be well enough to reach Lindblum. And I'm told Cid's made arrangements for your stay that don't include a dungeon cell or bonds." What a relief. 

_ "Nnnh." _ That hadn't been any of the others. Hard, coherent sound that hinted at the unharmed regions of Kuja's brain stirring to life. "Wh....... Where a-am——"

Away from him, Freya dropped her tankard. Amarant and Fratley rushed to the bed——leaving her by the window, surely in some form of chivalry. And the door crashed open with a Pluto Knight who'd worried himself sleeplessly this entire time. 

"Is he awake?! Is he all right? Sir, what's happened?"

"Hush! He's been asleep for too long to have any kind of comfortable dreams, to say nothing of how bright the room is...." But even he had to slow his breaths.... One trembling, broken-nailed hand rose to Kuja's eyes, carefully knuckled them free of a startling, fearful sleep...And they  _ opened. _

To say they were glassy was a considerable understatement. He blinked slowly, sight adjusting to the room...if Wendy was right, a room he hadn't seen in seven years. An alarmingly lucid expression crept over his features. He turned, apprehensive, looking from Freya to Fratley, to Amarant, then Mikoto and Hilda where they approached.

"...Where's Zidane? I'd've thought he'd beat down the door to see me alive.... But after what I told him, I suppose he...." No explanation for why he fell silent, none needed. One hand pressed fingers into his right temple. "M-My head is killing me.... Someone pass me an ether. I need to clear my brains out...."

"You aren't to have ether, Kuja." Mikoto solemnly spoke there. "Garland had far direr plans for you if you woke."

He shuddered in Steiner's arms. "That old freak knew I wouldn't die, didn't he? Sick bastard. Knowing him, he planted the Iifa Tree right into my skull."

No one said a thing to rebut it; even dazed, the older Genome wasn't a fool. 

"I was right. I saw it in that damn book...I thought he was lying to distract me from my mission. I wish he had been. And where are the others? Is Steiner here?" How could he not know who'd held him, dressed him, and ensured every moment he was here, he was safe? The knight knew he could forgive Kuja anything, even a momentary lapse in his senses.

"He's been holding you for days. He and Weimar rescued you."

A bewildered flush sprang to his cheeks. "I'm clean. My clothes were in tatters when they left...And the one person I thought despised me, who would never want to see me breathe again, came back for me after Zidane departed?"

"Beatrix despises you, Kuja. Not I. I don't think there's a moment in which I could." Steiner met eyes with his former adversary, really watched the flicker there. Understanding, perhaps, or more the fact that he knew the older man had bathed him these fearful mornings and evenings, watched for any hopeful signs...and loved him, in those smallest of ways.

"You're behaving as though you're my father. So how is she? Still raging over her defeat?"

"You never fought her, Kuja. You couldn't've. She would've done more to you than singe your feathers. Eventually she would've resorted to less seemly ways of harming you than open combat. She might've poisoned you, slain you in your sleep."

The mage shook his head; not in a conceited way, just a perfunctory manner that drew a cold shudder into Steiner's bones. 

"...The reason I left so soon," he explained, "the reason they didn't see me for some time after we met in Burmecia.... That night, I told her just what I thought about her upstaging my mages in their body count. I was angry that she chose to kill more soldiers than they could. She deliberately wasted one of them in her passing...That was the last thing I expected from her."

  
  


**‡**

  
  


_ "...Damn you." _

_ He couldn't recover it. He tried; nothing could be done for a mage with smoldering insides. Dali's automation, the easy combustion of Mist...All those beautiful inner workings.... "It wasn't enough that you had to exceed my troops," he cursed softly into the rainy sky, "but you killed the one I gave rudimentary awareness to. He led the others into battle. I had to order them back...giving you the chance to outstrip my pace irretrievably."  _ You're making me look like a novice in front of the woman I plan to end——I can't forgive that. I can't forgive you.

Goodnight, small one.  _ He frowned.  _ Slai was kind enough to test you.... When I gave you orders, she ensured you would follow them. And for her troubles, she'll never spend a night out in those seasonal rains. Even if her father dies, if the shop closes, she'll want for nothing.... After her mother died in the rain, I can't let it come to pass.

_ "At least she died in an inn," he thought aloud, "and not in that dreadful field. I wish I'd been there that day. I'd've been powerful enough to save her; I already knew enough magic to raise the dead at that point, as well as bury it back down if it revolted against me."  _ Harm, Cure, Pure and Life are really the only things a white mage needs.

_ Though Holy did the trick now and then. It seared his bones with the need to blow a certain ill-mannered General to pieces, just like she'd done to so many soldiers, to his precious strategist here.... "I'm going to solve this," he murmured to that poor dead thing. "I'll finish her off if I have to stay awake for a hundred nights. Mark my words, Beatrix is going to die at my hand.... For you, and all the other victims I'd've loved to give a sporting chance." _

_ Death. Destruction. Cold. Anguish. Despair. _

_ Death-destruction-cold-anguish-despair...death...deathdeathdeath—— _

_ Cold ground——Cold light, dead stars, no trees——The water, the sky, the light, the dead-light....The faces, the screaming—— Howling death, chained death, fire-death, monster-death, water-death.... _

_ "...Oh God," he moaned, sinking to his knees. The water-death, the hands on his neck.... Shoving him in, down, his lungs opening for all that flowing light...The hiding-death, the one he'd gotten for sheltering Vivi.... _

Vivi....  _ A hand shook on his cuirass. He'd broken several links tearing at it. _

_ "You're kneeling there like you're broken, Kuja! What's the matter; do you pity these rats? Or your expendable creations? Didn't you make them to destroy and be killed? Don't they only exist to kill?" _

_ "Those are Zorn and Thorn's," the Genome hissed. "I had nothing to do with those abominations, Beatrix. And if you're wise, you won't shed your insecurities on my pets again. Do you hear me?! I did nothing to deserve such ignominious welcome. You're terribly ungrateful for my reinforcements." _

_ She approached slowly, sword held by the haft in one gloved fist. "What, these  _ toys? _ They line up like lambs for the slaughter, Kuja. They're more suicidal than their creator." _

_ "You take that back!" In half an instant, his hands locked around her throat. Weapon clashing to the ground, she grappled with him——clawing at his fingers, fists smashing into one eye, his jaw, his Adam's apple—— Her knee crashed into his groin, driving a growl of agony upward into his throat. _

_ "Take it back," Kuja snarled, shoving his weight into her, sending her to the rainy street. "I will kill you right here, you sow! I do not fear death or anything that follows it! Do you hear me?! I  _ welcome _ the day my bones bleach in the sun. I thirst for the moment these cowards have their victory.... You will have gone to your ancestors long before the bloody morning I die. I promise you will have lain dead for  _ centuries _ before I give up my life, little fool!" _

_ "Such fury! Beatrix, apologize to him. You had no cause to ruin his amusement. He's here to aid my conquest, and he can do it far faster than you will.... You know nothing of the power I have waiting for me. Give him those words...I assure you, he's savage and capricious enough to kill you right there. He's done it before." _

_ Their eyes swiveled to the open air. Brahne stood with fan outstretched, voice booming in that wretched space. "Don't make me execute you myself later, girl! I will not lose my commander." _

_ "You don't...make...t-toys," the General croaked. _

_ That was enough for him. He released her, lips closing over his bared teeth—— Sifted his fingers through his hair, fixed his codpiece belts, smoothed his cuirass, tugged the rumple out of his stockings.... And he'd have to polish his boots and pauldrons later. A little disagreement never hurt anyone. "Defending what honor my creations have shouldn't have to be done. They aren't aware enough to defend themselves...you should be ashamed of your behavior." _

_ "There now," the hideous Queen soothed. "Come here. Haven't you soaked your clothes through. And she's gotten mud on your skirt.... Her flight from reason will not happen again. I promise you, this will have been the first and last act she takes so rudely...." _

Oh, but it's already the second one,  _ Kuja thought of saying.  _ Climhazzard is a weak attack, from a weak and cowardly girl.

  
  


**‡**

  
  


He wasn't overwhelmed with their presence for very long at all. After they'd all said their little greetings, told him how happy they were that he'd returned, other pithy things like that, everyone but Steiner left the room. He couldn't really say he minded the man; Adelbert Steiner had never been a threat of any kind to him. More like a butterfly, or some orange tomcat on a sill...fighting him again would be the height of  _ gaucherie, _ and unfair to both the victor and the victim.

What shocked him was how little he felt of strain here. The knight didn't mind him either, and in fact seemed to be a bit spoonier than the rest over his life and how he'd somehow managed to keep it. Kuja listened with half an ear to the man, to those plans where he'd be borne by gargant——A large mistake, as he'd fled  _ Gargan Roo _ with one of those beasties at his heels——to Lindblum, just to keep Beatrix away from him. 

Given both ether and provocation, he'd bathe in her blood. But he'd do it for honor now.... Somehow, the idea of seeing anyone else in that cold space, those dead in Memoria before he'd summoned Necron.... 

He even pitied the elephant-lady. She hadn't been thrown onto her path of greed until her husband died, and though the man had  _ expired _ before Kuja's arrival, it hadn't helped her case.

_ The Butcher of Burmecia. _ Freya had called Beatrix that with flashing eyes, clenched fists, lashing tail.... She despised the human, but couldn't overcome such ferocity with the dignity of a Dragon Knight. She'd have to fight like the beast she wasn't inside. She'd be forced to look inward, see the darkness welling up in her soul...She couldn't face such evils without destroying herself.

_ And I was never afraid of the dark,  _ he recalled. _ I was born in it. Why do I care so much for a bunch of mice who hadn't done anything to me or for me? Is it because they were like my mages, so soft and helpless when compared with true power? Is it because their sheer massive numbers were what kept them safe for so long? _

_ Or is it because someone, two someones, who lived in that ruined kingdom were willing to vouch for me after my fall? Why would they do that? What could they gain? For all they know, I could turn around and prove I cared very little for their sacrifice...their kind words, the way Freya touched my hair and whispered a verse of the ballad of Gizamaluke.... _

"I know you told him to leave you in the tree," Steiner said far away from him, returning him to the present. The fellow stood by the room's only window, hammering an enormous plank across the shutters...permanently closing them. He'd likely waited for Kuja to revive before he tried for such a thing. But the mage hadn't been cold. All he could remember was a firm, moving warmth, and when it'd left him was when he'd shivered.

That warmth had been Steiner's body, he slowly realized, and he'd selflessly given it to keep both of them secure. He sat upright——feeling an ache beneath his tail, the way his innards burned with any move he made. He knew that burn; he was no stranger to the detrimental things one had to do for love. 

"Elixir. When were you going to tell me that someone explored other methods of healing? It's an effective one to say the least, but it still stings to sit."

"I'm terribly sorry, Kuja. I tried to feed it to you inside the tree, but you couldn't swallow most of it. You ended up vomiting several times, sending it all over you. I wish I'd've figured out another way."

"It doesn't matter," he murmured absently. "Such pain is merely present, not vindictive."

Steiner set away the mallet and returned, one hand reaching to stroke his shoulder. Why the contact? No matter. His dark eyes shone when he did...a genuine emotion Kuja still didn't think he had. "Are you pained, lad?"

"You nearly cleaved my right leg off with your fury, and now you're concerned for me." What motive did this man have? "Whomever tended my wounds used considerable skill. I wish to thank them." Crimson suffused through those hard-boned cheeks. "You....  _ Well. _ They'll heal sooner or later, far better for your efforts."

"Naught but the return. You kept us alive...I can do no less."

"That's not the reason you did so...." Even lacking the right words, or emotion, he knew instinctive need when he saw it. Those endless evenings in Treno, he'd felt much of it...but no one there had truly understood. He would've been both god and heightsome catamite to whomever he'd chosen then. "But if you do have some motive, it may be better I don't know of it."

The human said nothing, merely sat in thought there on the edge of the bed for a few moments.

"...Garnet will arrive tomorrow. Lady Hilda thinks it best for her to determine your fate...I would risk execution were it deadly. I shall not surrender you to the gallows."

"Her Majesty was there in that final clash. If she will see me hanged," A cold air settled over Kuja's shoulders, "then I will take the rope."

But he didn't lose the fearful look in Steiner's eyes there. "You should rest, lad. Sleep.... Perhaps in the morn you will feel better." He didn't move but to help the mage back into bed, beneath the covers. "I shall keep the watch."

"You are just as tired as I am, and not half as magical. If you really want to take me from whatever fate she gives...." He looked quietly away.

The pallet depressed beside him. "A final night of comfort, then."


	6. VI

He could've slept rightly, if not for the terrors he saw when he tried. Every moment he woke, he had to feel his surroundings, his hand finding that soft, weak shoulder. It seemed he had resigned himself to the idea Kuja had...that despite her gentle nature, Garnet would offer him no clemency, and would stand by Zidane's bitterly weeping frame as the hangman killed his brother.

Did he sleep? The touch might've woken him. "I'm sorry, Kuja. I want no harm to come to you...in any way I can, I will see it's ameliorated or prevented. She saw and knows how you fought for your life and yet saved us."

"I killed her foster mother and destroyed her homeland. The Invincible and its storms killed Jane  _ and _ her husband...I orphaned Garnet twice." But he turned to face his comforter. "What reason could you have to try to save me?"

Steiner frowned sadly there. "You are not without your sins...but neither am I. The king ordered me to remove her horn; heaven help me. I caused pain to her in the young and fragile age you did. And from that day I vowed I would never see her harmed again."

"The sight of my face will harm her."

"What would you have me do?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. I haven't any answers for you...but perhaps you have some for me. Adelbert Steiner, why did you save me? Am I to serve a sort of penance?"

"Do you wish to?" For though the thought was loathsome, it might well do to save him from Beatrix, as well as the other souls who might end him. "I would not place a burden such as that upon you."

"My life," Kuja whispered, his eyes glowing with mana, "is now a burden to this world. Mikoto should not have helped me. You should not have done so. This entire planet is in danger the longer I live, and I don't know how to act. But to serve penance...."

"It sounds loathsome."

"Precisely." He wriggled a bit closer to Steiner, barely noticeable to most. "A filthy, terrible fate for a man accustomed to fineries.... Absolutely the last place the Silver Wizard would be. Tied to a soul as stern as stone...the kind who left the worst of scars on my frame...."

"Debased, utterly ruined...you would never again know the life you had. Whether alive or dead, you would be fully at the mercy of someone else...."

Those mystic eyes closed. "I could think of worse things."

  
  


**‡**

  
  


They sat in silence.... Kuja, beside a person he had never expected to see again. He knew the moment he spoke, he might well die.... Only the presence of Hildagarde herself before him prevented it.

"He saved you." Beatrix's tone was colder than ice. "And Weimar himself, the little brat.... He almost got you killed. You cannot be unaware. Her Majesty is hearing Steiner's words at this very moment.... I have already given mine. You should know they were not kind."

"Your words aren't even as kind as your sword," Fratley said behind Kuja. He removed his hat and knelt beside the mage with no pretense on the matter. "Had you both your eyes, you might see the error of your journey here.... A man's responsibility often comes at his defeat. Kuja has been brought low.... He isn't even speaking in his defense."

_ "What could he say?!  _ He killed our late Queen! Took her mind, her manner, her daughter's eidolons, and his Black Mage dolls killed your people! He is responsible for Brahne's fall from reason! Any fate for this monster defies what he truly deserves! Garland meant him death, and we should deliver it! For your honor, Sir Fratley! Why do you  _ spare _ him?!"

"Repayment of a debt. It is one I have come to remember in the presence of my lady.... A debt not unlike your own."

"I owe him nothing," she snarled. "Only Her Majesty's words will decide."

_ "Beatrix!" _

The General of Alexandria rose to her feet. "Your Majesty." Barely she turned, to acknowledge the two seated men. "Make him rise, Iron-Tail...I shall speak no further words to him."

"It seems you are summoned." He lowered a hand. "...She has already left."

"I am glad to find your name as Master Hunter has renown...even your enemy is aware of it." He rose, sighing. "Tomorrow I will be a lovely corpse and little else."

"I have determined what to do with you," Garnet murmured behind them. "Sir Fratley."

"Your Majesty."

"I must ask that you leave us. You as well, Aunt Hilda...I must speak to Kuja alone." She lowered her head in demure acknowledgment, of the knight and their ally. "...And I would know which person has been tormented in my absence."

They left without further words. He sincerely considered himself both blessed and cursed now...they would not see his fate, but she would deliver it to him. Silent and rightly so, he knelt.

"You have changed."

He closed his eyes——saying nothing, wanting not even a kind return before he was executed. She would do such a thing this way, put him to the sword where no one would see. Spare the others the sight of it.

"Steiner.... Please come in here."

As he'd thought. He wasn't being rescued; the man had either pleaded for his life and been denied, or had simply lied to protect Kuja from the truth. Those armored bootsteps were his death knell.

"Your fate has been decided by not only myself, but others you have affected as well. The remains of the settlement of Cleyra, the kingdom of Burmecia, the regency of Lindblum, and the Black Mage Village have sent diplomats who've spoken with me. Every one of them has said the same. And I spoke for Madain Sari...not Alexandria. I did not have the wisdom of age to do so." 

One heavy hand lowered to his head, holding him still.... Not hers, but Steiner's.

"Kuja, you are hereby sentenced to life imprisonment...and reduction of your status. You are no longer recognized as a noble anywhere. Where you would have been the conservator of Treno, you are to be stripped of the title. You are no longer even a  _ citizen _ of the regions you claimed; they belong to the crown as territories of conquest. So too——," Her hands joined Steiner's, but around Kuja's neck, "do you. I reduce you to chattel, to property.... You are given to Steiner's judgment from this day." Small fingers snapped a great stretch of metal closed where he fought to breathe——a  _ collar. _

"Mine alone, Your Majesty?"

"Yours, Adelbert Steiner. Beatrix is to have nothing to do with him, or his punishment. Everyone else wished him to live." She drew her hands away, moved the article they'd left to inspect its fit. "And ultimately, Kuja, so did you. When you saved this world and spared us, it was only for the knowledge you would not be alive. To bind you to existence is torture only  _ you _ would've devised, and freedom I can only give you this way. He saved you from what you feared most.... Trust him."

"He is short of breath."

She lifted his face by the chin, dark eyes searching his. "It isn't asphyxiation. He's panicked, mute from choice. But he knows what will happen now. He's to return with us to Alexandria. There, he'll serve his sentence in any way you see fit. His life is in your hands...he literally  _ belongs _ to you."

And from the angry shriek outside, Kuja realized he'd been spared after all. 


	7. VII

_ "'For your honor, Sir Fratley.' _ Beatrix does not know what honor is, Freya. Silverlocks is no longer even a person to Alexandria, or to anyone else. Only the kindness of his peers will give him such state. He has not changed in my eyes; he is still my ally."

She hung on the name. "Silverlocks. The lad you told me of, who saved your life after the Zaghnol gored you...That was  _ Kuja? _ The white mage responsible for your return after the Festival of the Hunt?"

"That is where my life-debt comes from. He preserved my dying self and departed, giving me opportunity to kill the beast. He had told the Minister he'd only come to observe and participate if he wished, not to fully compete. And I spoke of you," he knew, "I told him of my wifely lady, that I would introduce you. How ironic to find you met him in battle."

She nestled to his shoulder. Though her face still disappeared here and there in the depths of himself, remembering Silverlocks bridged the chasm Beatrix had struck into him. Freya had patiently awaited his return.... Now, thanks to the mage, all was well. 

But for him, it could never truly be. Fratley sighed, watching the sky pass around the  _ Hilda Garde IV. _ Before he'd been allowed to board, Kuja had been dressed solely in a long waistcloth, woven with the Alexandrian standard.... And his hair had been shorn, nearly off. His feathers, too, were gone..., pulled as carefully as could be from his scalp where they'd grown.

Reduced to nothing of his former self, he had been chained behind his back and led with an authoritative, though gentle hand onto the airship.

"Cid's conditions for him were far worse," Hilda said quietly behind them. "He planned to emasculate Kuja completely, remove his tongue, and sew his mouth shut. Steiner was not informed of that...It's a mercy Garnet sentenced him instead."

"Her clemency is enviable."

"Only to his frame," Hilda argued. "She has stripped all else he holds precious. What breadth of cupidity he has might as well not exist...he may grow to hate her, as well as Steiner."

"We cannot be speaking of the same man." Fratley blinked. "A greedy, sadistic monster? I never knew him in that state. Fear of Garland's wrath, the desire to see him ended.... Perhaps the only real emotions he has ever had were injurious to him. This sentence may be a blessing."

"Control taken from him, as well as the stress it creates.... I suppose I would have to agree. I'm going to see if Steiner needs anything."

"Give him our best," Freya offered, though Hilda might be heading into a dungeon to do so.

  
  


**‡**

  
  


He'd fallen to sleep here, on the plain and highly uncomfortable pallet Cid had afforded him in the brig. The man couldn't be convinced to allow him freedom of any kind, even chained and helpless as he was.

Steiner sat watching Kuja's weak rest, Mikoto frowning beside him. "He'll live, won't he? Is the seed still a present threat?"

"It appears to be symbiotic at this point. Silencing him with the collar will keep his magic from overtaxing his brain...Garnet has determined the best fate for him. Though I am disturbed by the knowledge of one he  _ would _ have received.... Regent Cidolfas would have removed his tongue, genitals, and any ability to nourish himself."

His blood froze. "I almost bore him to Lindblum for his safety. Kuja would've been given  _ that?" _

_ "...A cuckold will punish even the ascetic." _

"Kuja! You're awake? What does that collar do, if you can yet speak?"

"It prevents the open airway needed for spellcasting," the mage whispered. Truly, the artful thing seemed to prevent any kind of volume; they barely heard him under the softly rushing wind outside. He lifted himself to sit.

Mikoto quickly turned aside. Some relief crossed her features; Steiner saw why. Cid had been given no part of his desire. Kuja managed to stand, his tail wobbling as it tried to right him. 

"At least I'm alive...though I desperately regret my nudity."

"I will see you are given better clothes." Steiner's heart broke. "Mikoto, remain here with your brother. I must ask Garnet what conditions exist for his life."

"He is to always remain in your custody, Steiner," the young Queen returned, where she stood in the doorway. "I do not place any limit on what food you give him, whether you dress him properly.... But he may not have the collar removed unless he is muted in other ways. The bonds, too, must remain on him, arms behind his back when possible. Otherwise, he could strangle someone and escape; I will allow no excuse for Beatrix to strike or kill him. She barely complies with my order as it is."

"What of freedoms abroad?"

"You speak of unconventional ones.... Like the company of women. Correct?"

"You overestimate my charms," Kuja said, barely laughing there. "Not a woman on Gaia would touch me...especially not in this state. You could not force a courtesan to touch a slave, Your Majesty."

She inclined her head there. "You are not subject to the law but to your bearer. A crueler one might treat you as though  _ you _ were a woman, in defiance of Alexandrian law.... If you were aught but property now, you or he would be punished for it. But in this state you would merely be imprisoned comfort, a lovely pillow perhaps. I could not forbid whomever chose to claim you to do so."

Beside her Steiner's face burned. "Y-Your Majesty. Your mother ordered me to jail those few men whenever I found them...the gods preserve my soul. You would introduce a privilege only he has."

"No, Steiner, even in Mother's reign there were men who treated their property so. Women as well. If Kuja is desired by someone, regardless of their state or form, your words will permit or deny it...." Her voice lowered there, to nearly a whisper. 

"I would not forbid him every freedom...he became our friend and is only punished to preserve his life. If there is one you can find,  _ anyone, _ I give you leave to. He will grow lonely with no comfort and eventually die, regardless of my words. Loveless creatures waste away; flowers wither in darkness." One small hand lowered over his.

He nodded.

"I doubt you need to worry, Your Majesty," Kuja murmured, startling them back to the fore. "I will not seek anything I am not first offered."

"We are nearly to Alexandria." She turned. "Steiner, I suspect much. In the chest I brought, there was a cuirass.... Dress him fully. I do not want him shot."

"The armor was  _ his?" _

"Yes. And the robe over it. I would rather see him serve his sentence...." She handed over a ring of keys; he swallowed back the tightness in his throat.

This evening would be the first of Kuja's indignities...some of which Steiner might not be able to prevent.

  
  


**‡**

  
  


_ "There he is! That's Kuja!" _

_ "Give me a stone, I can strike him from here——" _

_ "——Don't, you fool, you'll hit Queen Garnet——" _

He had never been so mortified in his life. Too quickly for a walk, but too slowly for his nerves, Kuja passed down the street——chains held behind him in the Captain's grip, to his back.

No one could see Steiner's hand pressed softly there, rather than grind his armored fist into the Genome's spine. No one heard the soft, almost saddened thudding of the Queen's heart. She held a chain as well, that fixed to Kuja's collar from the front...leading him on, not even thrown rotten fruit permitted by that disapproving stare.

Beatrix kept pace beside her, ringing the heavy iron bell that preceded living property. Her voice carried down the road.

" _ By the order of Her Majesty, Queen Garnet Til Alexandros XVII.... The prisoner and despot, the formerly named Kuja——Now of neither state nor privilege! Pity not the criminal but disavow the crime! Cast no blood upon the sword of Alexandria, lest you be given over to his fate! He is from this day dead," _ She turned, to smirk cruelly into Kuja's face,  _ "and all his deeds die with him!" _

Behind his back, Steiner's hand faltered..., though his face remained as stern as ever. 

  
  


**‡**

  
  


"Kuja."

He sat looking out the window, where the rabble still gathered on their rooftops to see him any way they could.

"You're not truly dead," Steiner whispered. "This is done to every one of the few the realm has kept. It's an archaic punishment Brahne was fond of in her youth.... Though during her reign, even  _ she _ gave precious few souls to it."

"Garnet could've killed me." Kuja shivered in the room. "Rather that than be humiliated out there.... I did not love my life so much as to keep it this way."

A warm pelt slipped over his shoulders from behind, held in Steiner's arms. "Only to other appearances would you ever be punished. She had forgiven you the moment you preserved us."

"But she can't just pardon me," Kuja returned, knowing why she'd done so. Alexandria and Lindblum were barely allied to begin with, and the act of freeing him would've doomed them further. "She wanted me to be able to live the way I wished. But I did not lie back there, Captain, I cannot be a lover of any kind to women now. And such other sins are not permitted  _ anywhere _ they are known of. I will be an ascetic forever, or I will be pitied."

Steiner shook his head. "I do not pity you this way. I wish you to be comforted."

"Even after Vivi died from my harm.... His fighting me strained the Mist balance inside him. He died quicker because he was there."

"He did not truly suffer, Kuja. He spoke of you...of understanding you, the terror you felt of your life leaving you.... In his last hours, Master Vivi  _ loved  _ you. He thanked you for his existence...and prayed he would see you again. He wished you life. Garnet held him to her bosoms there, she heard his words—— _ They were counted." _

"The diplomat she spoke of, from the Black Mage Village...." His heart sank. Vivi had  _ forgiven _ him. And he didn't know whether he could defy the laws of creation again, but if the little mage were to live, Kuja would have to break free of his sentence. Cid knew it. Beatrix knew it. Anyone to see a living Vivi would realize his creator had broken the law.

He ventured the subject there. "She knew if I were permanently Silenced, I could never give Vivi life again."

"She knew...and Cidolfas does not care. To him, Master Vivi was always a non-entity, just as you are seen now." The burly man hugged Kuja close to stave off his chill, perhaps knowing it himself. "You are not so unlike him.... Only unaware of your potential, hiding from the possibilities."

"From inside a cage I entered." How painfully ironic. He'd fought for his freedom since his birth..., and now he had nothing, not even  _ freedom. _ Though he knew it was necessary, his eyes glazed over with tears.

Sadness he'd not felt since what he'd thought were his last days, beside Zidane in the tree. Kuja sagged to the human's hold and wept, knowing nothing, feeling somehow more useless than he had then. Why did Steiner save him? He still hadn't gotten the answer!

"...Why, Steiner...why couldn't you have let me  _ die?" _

  
  


**‡**

  
  


"I cannot remain in this castle, Your Majesty. I do not believe myself suited for service any longer."

Garnet sat at the balcony, sighing——she knew why. It was no great struggle. "Your words trouble me," she whispered. "If you are leaving, what does this mean for Steiner?"

"He can leave Kuja to other people, other punishments...or not be married to me. I cannot comply  _ and _ remain. For my safety and his I must depart." Beatrix knelt before Garnet's outstretched hand. "I humbly beg your forgiveness on the matter."

The monarch nodded. Beatrix had already been forgiven, pardoned, but no such luxury could come to Kuja. The rank hypocrisy twisted her bowels upon themselves. "You are released from your duties if you feel it necessary."

"I will always be loyal to the crown, but should it come to war with wherever I settle in, I will have to defend my new home from Steiner's thrall. Please do not be angry with me."

"I would counsel you to remain strong and moral, for if that region wars with Alexandria, Kuja may be ordered to defend the crown. It will not end well for you if either of you act." Garnet knew a veiled threat when she heard it. "And with your shared history and its debt to me, I must remind you of your responsibilities. Go in peace, Beatrix. Kuja has been punished and continues to serve it. Your marriage is hereby dissolved, and nothing remains to force your stay here. I would not burden you."

The older woman nodded. "I thank you."

"He will exist as though he has never heard of you. I exhort you to do the same for your safety and ours." Garnet could barely look at her——the fury had not faded with peacetime. Treaties had been made, but the most vital of them wasn't honored here.... She truly did owe Kuja her life and refused to see it. Even Cid, as much as he hated the mage, was reasonable enough to know his limit.

"Farewell, Garnet. I wish you a long and healthy reign...and that he does nothing to end it. You are entirely too gracious for this world." The former General of Alexandria bowed low.

"Farewell." It would've ended earlier, if not for Kuja. Beatrix had only stayed for Steiner and his love. "Where do you go?"

"The regent has offered me a room in his castle until I decide. Should you need me...."

"I will see that you're told. Travel safely, my  _ friend." _ Heart aching for what had to be done, and who she had to lose, Garnet lowered her head. "I will remember your service to the realm as one of good."

"And you will be remembered as fondly." Troubling emotions showed on Beatrix's face as she retreated, turned, and slowly departed the room.


	8. VIII

The stone tub was large, serviceable...and the water, thankfully hot. He dared not ask for more; the guards were not informed of Garnet's mercy, nor was anyone else outside their small number.

"You give him a grace," the night watch murmured from outside, her back to them.

Steiner put on as much a vestige of his former self as possible. "He has not properly bathed since his extraction from the Iifa Tree. I will not have him in the barracks with foul humors." Beside him, staring mutely at the stone tub, Kuja shook his head.

"The General has left. Her Majesty informs us we are to serve under your guidance now if we plan to continue." The soft sag of her shoulders told him of confusion among the ranks. "I hear she's gone to Lindblum...and that your marriage is annulled."

"That's correct." He sighed; dissolved was more the term, as he had performed his marital duties more than once. But left to her own devices now, Beatrix could seek anyone she wished, perhaps a man who shared her uncommon hatred for Kuja.

"What will you do now?"

"I have not decided." Though that too might not be correct. Kuja slowly bent his arms; Steiner's hands shook on the belt, unsure whether anyone could see him disrobing the lissome man. "Into the tub then, lad, before it goes cold." The volume to his voice distracted him enough to strip the Genome and urge him into the water.

Kuja hissed——perhaps it was too hot for his skin. Or his wounds...either way, with mythril collar and chains, he wouldn't be able to wash himself. He leaned back as Steiner eyed him for any sign of injury, or one that hadn't healed well——and waited, for his handler's judgement.

"Your frame has fouled in more ways than one.... Sickness still hangs heavy over your frame. Remain there while I retrieve more soap."

The door barely opened; the guard slipped in to hold the Genome firmly by the shoulders for those bare moments. "You  _ are _ smelly," she agreed. "Eighteen months and you're still alive. No wonder the General dislikes you...you'd be hard to kill."

"He will serve the rest of his natural days as a thrall. I'll see he's fed and doesn't grow sick from lack of necessities." Steiner knew of one he might have to provide very soon——fighting back the thought as he retrieved a great hunk of tallow muddled with lye and ambergris, he steadied his breaths. This soap would be painful to such delicate skin.

It might already be in the water, which had clouded from ingredients added.  _ That _ was why he'd hissed...the sufficient standard Steiner kept would not be so to Kuja. "I'll have to make a journey to Treno; the first task he has is to repair the banners of the countries he toppled. Cleyra will have nowhere to hang them, but we'll give them nonetheless. You are to do your job expediently and well, Kuja."

"...I owned a Mysidian basque loom."

"What does that produce?" The knowledge would be helpful.

"Striped fabric, Captain. Much like that gol...I mean,  _ Vivi Ornitier's _ ...clothes. His pants. The loom type is exclusively used by mages and very valuable. If they haven't auctioned it off, it's perfect for banners."

"You and I will have to go to Treno soon, then, lad. I will bring the loom back.... Her Majesty will find it a necessary possession for your sentence. And when we have it, you will begin with Cleyra's banner.... For the fact you dispelled the sandstorm and left them vulnerable to Odin."

He turned, a clean linen tunic, soap and sponge in hand. The brush would be unsuitable for injured skin in any case. "I will assign you other duties as needed. This is your first." A look to the guard sent her retreating elsewhere——guilty stain to her cheeks; she had been watching Kuja very closely.

"I will alert Her Majesty to your need, Captain. Will you be safe without me?"

"Assuredly." He watched Kuja's downcast eyes, and the bare wondering hope that flickered in them. "And now.... I'm afraid your skin won't enjoy this very much. Mine barely endures it now and then."

The gate clattered closed and locked behind them. No one there; they'd definitely hear if anyone happened to enter.

"Your hardness almost seems like a farce now." Kuja's voice was quieter than he'd heard yet...clearly trying to keep himself unnoticed.

Steiner smiled briefly there, wishing for better locations, freer speech. "She was looking at you amorously, you know. You might've been able to have respite from  _ her _ this evening...instead of a man ten years your senior bathing you by hand."

"Stronger discipline is a better idea in any case...." The mage looked up——he could not know how furiously his governor wished to kiss him. Arms behind his back, though, he settled...thighs barely spreading to settle his tail down between them. A slight visual provocation.... For purposes of necessity. Still the discipline faltered there, as did Adelbert Steiner's rein over his cock.

He fairly thirsted for the lad now.

Kuja wearily closed his eyes. "I'm not used to being so restrained. But please...if you must bathe me, I will not move."

"Right." Steiner attended to duty, thinking better of arousal and its mires. The sponge he'd chosen instead of his brush smoothed over quivering, tense muscles in his hand; he switched it to the other one and held Kuja steady with his left. 

Soft skin...Too soft, now. He'd seemed less fragile in Conde Petie. Barely able to think, he washed, that crudely-shorn head of hair moving slowly onto his neck. The lad allowed him his work, turned...face leaning in to nestle there to his ear.

_ "...too hard," _ he was saying.... 

The knight captain looked down to find reddened skin beneath his hand. He'd been mindlessly scrubbing Kuja as though he were a filthy tunic. 

The thought stumbled in his brain. "I'm so very sorry. Please allow me to get you out of there...." But he hadn't nearly managed to wash everything. "Or maybe allow you one hand."

"Dangerous idea," Kuja whispered. "Or that's what they say these days.... I could not care less. I know you didn't mean any harm."

"Which would be better, do you think?"

A breathless laugh burst from his lips. "You're asking the slave. I'm not allowed an opinion. Though my body still stings from that sponge...you're terribly strong."

_ Gentleness then, _ Steiner decided.  _ He deserves that much. _ "I'll prevent you from getting into any more trouble.... Pray forgive me for the necessary work." If forgiveness was expressed in motions, the Genome rising enough from the bath to tuck his legs beneath him had to be it. Thighs spread, with good distance between them.... His handler lifted his tail from the water first, and patiently cleaned that flawless fur.

Harsh breaths. The closer to him Steiner got, the further up his spine, the more he seemed to forgive the rough treatment before. The hand holding him by the thigh felt quivering muscles, sparse hair...and accidentally nudged the mage's cock. It twitched against his hand at what might be an erotic sensation for him.

"Your tail is very sensitive...," he observed quietly, casting a glance to Kuja's face——the man's eyes were closed, teeth seized over his lower lip. "I'll have to ensure it stays clean."

"Swollen," came the trembling whisper, "f-from the Elixir and the tree...."

"Your tail?"

"No... _ inside _ ...Genomes have scent glands...."

"Was this why you hissed earlier?" He hadn't imagined the musk of Kuja's cologne was a natural one. Pheromones, then? 

A shaky nod. And it wouldn't have been something he'd ask for help with if he'd had a choice.

Steiner could think of several ways to aid them, only one of which was meant to be pleasant. Though releasing the sponge, holding Kuja by the collar now instead of the thigh, would have to suffice. The hand he'd been bathing him with ventured beneath that silky tail.

The skin was so slick here.... As though oiled. Pale pinkish droplets floated to the surface of the water, meandered to cling to Steiner's bicep. There...that scent of the mage at his most powerful, riddled with mana.... Carefully he managed a fingertip through and deeper, pressed the first swell he'd found.

A sharp, aroused cry from the Genome, the kind that strained his breeches. Wrong place.... Not to the front, likely more to the sides. Either one held a worsening, fevered patch.

Firmly compressing one got a slippery jet of substance. The other responded in kind. And the mage sagged bonelessly in his arms, sighing. Maybe this was a reason he'd been so upset. Not only enslavement, but eighteen months of lying there, the glands slowly infecting or refusing to drain.... He'd've been unreachable regardless. The agony Steiner had seen in Conde Petie could've been  _ this _ as well as his injuries.

The bath filled with musk. They were fairly slick with it. He drew his hand back to find the sponge.... There? No. Next to Kuja? No. In front of—— 

Oh, that poor, longsuffering lad. Steiner's forearm brushed into it with his search; his chained comrade had gotten some kind of respite, though another might be needed. He hunted with a hand everywhere else, face hot, and then that mouth drew to his ear again.

"...I think it's beneath me." Not much he could do now. Kuja raised a bit more, so Steiner could search——the thing had been under him. Beneath his loins, closer to them than his tail.

This might be an opportunity. "I certainly need to wash you further, my lad. I tried to be delicate while you were unable.... I must ask your leave."

"You mustn't ask anything. I'm legally your slave."

"Then I  _ would _ ask your leave. May I fully wash you? Or would you rather someone else?"

"It's an ordeal even to be chained. Let's not add anyone else's hands to this mess...." An oddly suppliant look hung in his eyes. Even without complex emotions, he had his needs, like nearly every other creature did.

"Tell me when to cease."

"Cease when you want to."

"Very well." Though if he did that, the Genome would be held in his arms for more than washing. The permeating effluence of sweat, soap and musk gave way to merely the last——under Steiner's gentle work, his lad bent double. Gasping, half-moaned words in what couldn't be Gaian stirred his blood  _ and _ his manner.

Kuja panted, seeking purchase on the other end of the tub. His face flattened to the stone as Steiner washed...Body a torturous, lovely sight. Stares fixed to each other——Steiner rose to cross around, knelt in front of him.

"If I did not know better, lad, I would say the respite you need is one I could give you here."

A trembling nod, as though the mage were struck with a temblor. One large hand slipped back beneath the water, the other authoritatively held his shoulder. Kuja's eyes squeezed closed.

"As soon as you're clean, I'll put you to bed." And ache to keep him there. "Head down, right here..., you must not be loud."

Soft face into his shoulder. Softer body surrendering to his touch. He abandoned the sponge, instead laid hand on him and stroked. Kuja's eyes widened where he leaned——mouth wobbled, pressed, barely kissed....

_ Such need as this. It fled us soon after the marriage began...only in my soul, after the first time I visited his epitaph and she caught me.... _ Struggling, weak moans, the lad wanted those chains off so he could be held. How Steiner knew——

Kuja's teeth found muscle. Not hard enough to injure; he bucked in the knight's hold, hips shoving against his hand. Steeply he inhaled through his small nose and stilled.

The hand holding his shoulder rose to his head. "There now," Steiner soothed in a whisper. "Maybe you can rest this evening.... This change in your status will take some time to adjust to. I hope to make the process as  _ comfortable," _ He barely breathed the word, "as possible. This world is not prepared to accept the debt it owes, and until then I will see no one harms you. All I ask is that you are honest with me."

Head sagging free of his shoulder, Kuja managed a nod. Carefully he extracted the lad from the bath, set him onto the edge to dress him...the mage had less an angry manner now. He might understand.

One arm came free of its chain to slip through a sleeve, then up to the ring in fore. He could sleep this way without being able to escape or hurting himself. Then, the other, and the long chain behind him. He wobbled where he sat, too sleepy or weak to keep pace. 

"Time for bed, lad." Steiner lifted Kuja, over the shoulder he'd barely bruised with his teeth, and held him by the legs. The barracks were up the tower.

Though his mind raced with confusion, love, and a need of his own.

  
  


**‡**

  
  


_ "There you are. He looks very clean." _

_ "I tried, Your Majesty.... Kuja's nature leaves him with a bit of scent. I must get him to the tower to rest." _

_ "Not in there, he will sicken. To your chambers with him. You must not let him catch pneumonia." _

_ "A cold night, then?" _

_ "The tower is too easy to breach. I would not have anyone carry out Beatrix's will in her absence." _

_ "Aye, Your Majesty." _

One soft, small hand smoothed over his back. "Goodnight, Kuja," Garnet whispered, though it might pain her to have to do this. "Sleep well...."

_ Why would she wish me something like that? _ His confusion followed them like a spectre into the castle.


	9. IX

He didn't deserve this.

The realization, the depression, haunted him. Steiner barred the door, caged the windows, ensured no way to get  _ in  _ existed...and turned around, sighing.

"Beatrix will assuredly attempt to kill you. I only wish I could leave you freed to defend yourself." Why, why would he say this? Beatrix's words had been harsh, but if they weren't honest! She'd been likely the most forthright person in Alexandria, and now she was gone to plot his death. 

Why did they  _ forgive _ him?  _ Why?! _

"It is not a great deal of people who love you," the knight said there, as if he knew Kuja's thoughts. "Her anger is shared by a multitude."

"So it's only you eight who love me."

"The count is likely double that,  _ if _ that. Those who don't know you aren't counted in it...but do not forget Weimar. He asked of you this evening and wishes you health...even covered you with his tunic from chivalrous intent. Wendy, as well."

"Incidental. The Black Mages were their first close traders since the destruction of Madain Sari. Everyone else requires journeying and mana to get to."

"You do not understand, do you? We know your heart. We  _ know _ why you committed what seem like hateful acts." Sinking down onto the bed beside Kuja, Steiner admitted, "I fear every journey I attempt for at least a day of it. I am  _ terrified _ of oglops. Fear is natural. It preserves you."

He stared into the human's eyes. "Oglops?"

"To the depth I punched the regent squarely in the face before I knew he had been transformed." His quiet reply sent Kuja into a fit of titters. "Oh yes, I did. I punched him with all my might, the lecherous bastard."

"You don't like him."

"At  _ all. _ He is a destructive, arrogant libertine, who couldn't even wait for Hilda to reach a woman's twenty years before he married her. She was fourteen and terrified when she became his wife.... I am told they consummated that  _ evening." _

His blood curdled. "Brahne wanted me to marry Garnet. I wouldn't have done so before her twentieth birthday in any case; she and I have the same distance of years. To fornicate with a child...."

"Under no circumstances is it right. She might've died in childbirth if he weren't infertile; that's how it happens in humans, you see. A girl is unjustly impregnated before her body has finished its growth. She endures monumental pain...and then the babe's father chooses the child over its mother. Humans are cruel, Kuja."

"I can think of one who is not," the Genome returned delicately. The knight deserved not a  _ small _ amount of his respect——he had nearly all of it Kuja could muster.

"Well. The affection is returned, and ardently so." Puffing his chest but a little, Steiner declared, "I am not at all sorry I struck Cid. For what he wanted to do to you, I wish I could cleave him in twain. I didn't preserve you for you to become a joyless, voiceless eunuch at the hands of a man who  _ thinks _ he was cuckolded."

"You knew."

"Hilda would've spoken of it. The only thing she told me in close confidence was of the night a vent in Mount Gulug opened behind her cell. Freezing an entire mountain...."

"I couldn't parlay with charred _manamortam."_

"Manamortam?"

"Among the scholarly sort it's known as magebone, or Mysidian diamond.... It's actually what remains after a mage, or a monster dependent on mana, passes away. The mana we process soaks into our bones and eventually replaces all marrow, even to the harder shell around it.... It's also the chiefest source of ether as an element. Mana can't be destroyed...only relocated until it's used again. The Ether we drink as a tonic is literally, right now, sourced from those dead in the Mysidian genocides. Black mages...human black mages...are the  _ bulk _ of the supply."

Steiner's mouth fell open. "So....  _ This _ is why no one can find them."

"They are considered extinct. My dolls are the first anyone had seen of them in thousands of years." Kuja sighed there——Hilda was a black-type sorceress, he yet another white. "Though Hilda might become one if she infused herself with _Lich's Heart,_ as the ancient ones did. Make no mistake, a lich is difficult to even wound. But Beatrix was there the day I gathered the final ingredient, to make Vivi live after Garland killed him."

  
  


**‡**

  
  


_ "The forest is quiet." Yes, all but Beatrix, the clank of her phalanx's swords and armor, the pounding footsteps of the elephant-lady...and even the rustling of his own skirt and cuirass as he padded softly behind. _

_ "Of course it is, General." He felt the black whispers around him. "There's a  _ lich _ in here." _

_ Their steps stopped——they turned to look at him. Evil Forest had enough of a reputation that he couldn't be wrong. Quietly he pulled and drained a bottle of ether, leaving just a bit behind in the glass.... Just enough to fill it with a binding ward. _

_ "A lich, Kuja?" _

_ "A nasty type of undead. They can't be destroyed with Cure, nor potions...and elemental attacks don't faze them whatsoever. You can't burn something that possesses its own fire." _

_ "Perhaps we should run...." In any other case, Beatrix would be right. But it was too close; it'd kill at least half the slowest people, even if they took off now. Those poor trembling girls. _

_ "No." He passed through the middle of the group to stand in front of Brahne. "Walk slowly. Give no indication you know. The language of a lich doesn't even resemble Gaian; though it hears us, it has no clue what we're saying. It might as well be deaf." _

_ "Then how did it find us?" _

_ "We're alive. Our hearts beat. And my blood contains an alarming amount of mana." More, too, for what he needed to do. _

_ Beatrix hardened there. She wasn't fond of him in the least; the feeling was mutual. "Can we pass through safely?" _

"You _ can, if you keep calm. It's tracking me more than it is you." He cast a glance behind him. "And for Cosmos's sakes, don't attack it. Physical attacks will only make it angry——you can't so much as  _ hurt _ it with a sword." _

_ "So what do we  _ do?!"

_ "You walk——," Its mana-riddled rime was drawing closer, "and pretend you don't hear or feel it. You might've noticed it's colder here, all of a sudden.... That's the lich itself you're feeling." _

_ A drop of sweat slithered down Beatrix's face, beneath her bandage. "Move calmly, girls.... Though I am disinclined to agree with our host, risking your lives is nothing I will do." _

Simple woman. _ He almost despised her then, but led them on, skirting the edge of the creature's frigid radius. He was no stranger to ice spells; they were his better offensive for most, but they'd only feed its power. _

_ Only one choice remained, he reflected as a scream pierced the air...but he hated to show his might this soon. _

"Illa!"

_ Kuja turned calmly around, too calmly for the peril. Illa——probably a green private, barely old enough to join——lay dead in the path. Face shot through with rime, caught in a month-long freeze.... And behind them, the radiating, frozen shadow itself, gripped to bones, ragged, bloodstained cloth...and Illa's sword through its chest. _

"Move! Get out of the way——"

_ One chance. A single space of moments, they scattered in dragging motion around him.... He raised the ether bottle, screamed words that sent hot mana rushing around him. _

_ Kuja hurled both bottle and spell at nearly the same moment——and time itself seemed to stop. _

_ A shrill whine tore through the air. Girls grabbed for one another, Beatrix shielded Brahne...and before them, that shadowy flame extinguished. Fabric shot like war banners, bones like arrows—— The very ground quaked, frozen gale knocking them from their feet. _

  
  


**‡**

  
  


_ The Genome rose, looked around in the silence.  _

_ Ice crystals gleamed like deathly jewels——on the trees, the soil, poor dead Illa.... And as he turned, even Beatrix and the others. Kuja was the only thing not rimey in the least, for perhaps a league around them. _

_ Slowly he crossed the frosty soil...to where the lich had been. "If you leave her body intact, she will become a lich herself," he said quietly, to the owner of approaching footsteps. _

_ "And what will I tell her mother, Kuja?" _

_ "I don't know." He knelt there, in the deepest layer of ice on the ground...and his hand found glass. Too cold to grip for long. "But she didn't die in vain; this place had been plagued for some time. With the lich dead, the wildlife may return." _

_ She frowned——catching sight of the bottle, where its night-dark contents reddened Kuja's skin from the touch. "And what is that?" _

_ "The final ingredient to my task. Her Majesty requires new forms of defense, so the living are not taken so young." At least that might explain it. "We must give Illa back to the land tonight, Beatrix, before we leave. Her ashes may be brought home. But not her body in form; anything corporeal must be her sword and helm." _

_ She turned away, shoulders shaking. Behind her, the others approached him, only one speaking a thing in his defense to her General. _

_ "He said we couldn't attack it, ma'am. He warned us. You heard him." _

_ She nodded——though her trembling didn't cease. He had both felled her idea of superiority and achieved his desires at once. _

_ Though both were deserved, Kuja knew he'd regret this. _

  
  


**‡**

  
  


"A lich." He sat still on the bed's edge. "Master Vivi was undead." What a thing to learn about his dearest friend...minus Kuja, who possessed nearly all of Vivi's better traits while still being alive. Not projection, really——he simply didn't know how dear he was.

He sat there, that doomed, introspective man..., unable to see his worth and who loved him. The knight leaned close, reached a hand out to touch his face, and was not rebuffed. Kuja had simply exhausted himself of any will to fight.

How heartbreaking. Garnet's mercy was a sword of Damocles...hung over his heart where it lay in the bare.

"Are you tired, lad?"

"Of everything." Those crystalline eyes glazed with tears. "I wanted to die and no one will let me. They see hope in me that I can't find..., and there in the tree I was not on Gaia. I was with Necron."

Steiner didn't know what to offer, only allowed him his speech. Listening would be a virtue and comfort.

"He held me there...." Kuja attempted to dry his eyes. "Told me why he had departed...he was not there by your wills and neither left by them."

"Your heart. Your will."

_"His._ I am not here by mercy, Steiner, or he would have taken me. In my dreaming before I woke, when I tried to ease my pain, he told me it was a trial I faced. He gave me no choice. And with or without my power, Vivi will wake again.... But not as we want him to."

"As a lich. He will change."

"It will either be gradual or all at once, but soon Cid may try to kill  _ him, _ not me. I should be in the village...if Beatrix cannot harm me she will end whoever else she can. The mages who escaped me are even now in slumber.... Not dead."

A worse thing to know was hardly found. His sudden powerlessness descended over his bones. And Vivi would have to fight Beatrix alone, or the village would have to hold back the fury of Lindblum. It couldn't be done without massive human loss, Genome loss, and all of the mages. Another war could begin...with far more blood.

"Garnet must be told."

"I cannot do it." No, he couldn't. Necron would have his sacrifice one way or another. "I just don't want our bargain to end badly."

Bargain? "What were you promised, and what did you give?"

"...I was not given a soul, Steiner, but a task. He sees what I see.... And when this world is done, it will be my hand at the helm...and his power behind it. I am again the Angel of Death." Kuja drew a ragged, trembling breath. "Necron has replaced Garland."

His life was a burden to this world. Now, the human understood.

"Gaia has promise. But when hate outweighs its worth...." The mage had no further words, and did not need any. He sank into the sheets and closed his eyes.

Maybe words were no longer needed tonight. Steiner slowly moved to where Kuja rested, lay beside him...beckoned him there, to a wider shoulder than his. He pressed his lips to his lad's forehead.

"I just...." The whisper was a desperate one. "Want to begin, again. To live anew and know what you lot see behind my eyes. You place so much belief in me.... I want to know of it."

His arms encircled that shaking body, where even in its strength it was more fragile than before.

"I will endeavor to  _ show _ you, my friend."


	10. X

She couldn't sleep.

Garnet had thought overlong about Kuja, about the sentence that had been more pain to him than panacea. Beatrix still held malice...the kind that festered like a poisoned wound. The gall streamed from her mouth, anyone could see it. Steiner had tasted it for the year they'd been married.

Kuja had been mired in it up to his neck.

Had it been Brahne whose death had sent her over the edge? Or Illa, the girl who'd struck a lich and died? Maybe Sir Fratley and Freya, their speeches, how they had forgiven him all——even the genocide his mages had dealt them? They only hated Beatrix now.

She had been absolved. She would suffer no further sentence. But maybe the answer was none of them.

She'd come with Garnet and the others, minus Kuja and Zidane, to see Vivi in his last days. The little mage  _ himself _ might be the cause of her anger.

  
  


**‡**

  
  


_ "Don't move...Let me help you. Slide this under his head, Freya...." _

_ He looked so small here. Barely breathed. And while they moved around him, trying to attend to his comfort, he lay looking up at them, his formerly bright yellow eyes dimmer than amber now. What might be eyelids closed around them, slowly, blinking in what still had to be too-harsh light. _

_ Now, more than ever, he needed them. _

_ "Oh, Master Vivi.... You are so brave." Steiner hid his face beneath the brim of his helm, only his eyes showing to watch the tiny, embattled mage. "A terrible shame it must come now...." _

_ "...I...it's......o-okay, Steiner......." _

_ "Balderdash. It's not at all, Vivi...." He turned to reach for Beatrix...the woman barely moved there, just watched their child-friend with spine as stiff as iron. Though it seemed pity shone in her eye. _

_ "How cruel that he has sentenced you to this." _

_ Vivi barely shook his head, as much as he could manage. "I w...wouldn't be alive without him. I wouldn't have known any of you...without him. I wish he was here.... He tried so hard to live. He tried harder than...than I ever did. I'm r-really gonna miss Kuja." _

_ "Why, child?  _ Why _ do you love him?" Her voice shook as she did. "He made you only to abandon you and let you die. Kuja did not care about any of you." _

_ "H-he did," Vivi managed, "...in the end." _

_ Beatrix turned about on her booted feet. Said nothing else, but quickly departed the room. Clearly torn between his new wife and his dying friend, Steiner sank to his knees...making the more important of the choices, though Garnet felt badly for the General as well. _

_ Beatrix couldn't decide between her love for Steiner, and the complication of Vivi's existence. _

  
  


**‡**

  
  


He had love again, though in another soul. 

Steiner's breath fell on his neck, the bare amount of it not shielded in mythril. He lay there with wrists chained to his chest——unable to move, for the fact of metal and strong hot muscles. The human was a furnace...and perhaps, it was not Vivi who'd been doomed to become a lich. Chills settled into Kuja, bone-deep, bound to him as he was now to life.

The knight hugged harder in his sleep. Touching, somehow, to think  _ someone _ cared...when as of now, Kuja didn't think he could. Necron had begun to gradually show him more with each resting moment, things he couldn't tell anyone of——this collar wouldn't last, nor the chains. The idyll here wouldn't either. And he had never had any control over Vivi, the child had been chosen for other things from the day he breathed.

He, too, was Necron's slave.

The knowledge this fate was temporary barely cheered Kuja. Vivi would not understand when he woke...nor would anyone else be convinced Kuja had not done it. With the Lich's Heart in their bodies, even in poor quantity, all the other mages needed was an infusion of mana. Ether in each body would raise them...for whatever life they desired, however they wanted to exist.

How nice to know it would be easy for them. He lay awake on his side, wishing Steiner would wake so they could talk——but not wanting to wake him; humans had to sleep for great stretches of time. 

What had possessed him to behave the way he did in the baths? True enough, the guard had been watching Kuja, but she reminded him of the girl who'd died in Evil Forest. All these little women did. Humans the lot of them, unable to endure even the gentlest of behavior from a man who outstripped them by at least a foot in height. Fragile, unable to immobilize him if the worst occurred——when Steiner had struck Kuja in the height of his Tranced form, without fear.

Nearly another foot taller, a hundred pounds heavier.... He'd easily snap the neck of the first soul to attempt his recapture. But in Adelbert Steiner's hold....

Even were he Tranced, he would never harm the man again. Not after the time he'd spent trying to aid the Genome back to life. A life undeserved, but loved all the same.... He couldn't fathom it. The genteel fellow still held tightly to him, as though he would end when Kuja did. (Truly, he would, but he needed not to know that. Thinking about all of Gaia falling to ruin depressed the mage further.)

That hard body stirred. Slowly Steiner's arms loosened their lock; a warm, coarsely-touched cheek rubbed to his shoulder.

"...You're awake," he managed, hoping it was so. What madness.

Hot breath touched his skin. Warmer human turned him there, just barely. "You cannot sleep either? It must be horribly uncomfortable here."

"Not really. But you spent so very long a time trying to help me back.... I was wondering if we could talk." On the thick pillows there (an especially fluffed one on his side, he hadn't missed seeing that), he watched his governor, wondering why. Steiner had so far avoided the central reason...he'd saved Kuja, but had declined to fully tell him his motives.

"But of course, lad. What about?"

His eyelids lowered...covering the room in a darker haze, in the event he could get back to sleep. "Just my same stupid question. I really wanted to know what made you come back for me. It's not that I'm angry, only confused. I don't understand what made me worth saving."

"The castle erected an epitaph privately, at Garnet's urgings...the first time I saw it, I wanted to remain there all day. I gathered lilacs, lilies, daisies, roses...all the flowers I could muster, even whatever weeds had grown blossoms. My wounds were mortal, Kuja. I would've died if we had simply escaped your hold. In the weeks since I realized that, recalled where I had been injured and how deeply...It gave me the courage to even speak to Beatrix as I did, to ask her what I did, and to find out she reviled you as strongly as she had the day you met.... You prevented Garland from destroying our world. We had not even known he existed, or that you weren't Gaian."

"I was not  _ of _ this world, but the moment I saw it, I loved it."

"So that was why you aided us," the human murmured, "and perhaps, you might understand why I returned for you. When I realized you had stayed  _ my _ frame from death, I revisited every moment of my life as I remembered it. The others could've lived if we'd somehow been able to flee...but I would've been buried shortly after our return. I cannot stop thinking about it..., and how a man I didn't know beyond his name thought  _ me _ worthy to live."

"This world would be poorer for your absence, Adelbert Steiner." He watched the flicker in those dark eyes. "When faced with new reality, you do not simply abandon it...you learn and evolve. You do what I have never been able to.... Zidane and the others seemed to have misjudged you. You're not oafish or cruel. Your fear of oglops isn't a pathetic one, or anything to laugh at. You have the strongest soul of anyone I've ever seen...," Here, Kuja looked away, "and I wish I could be a tenth as mature. You were the perfect guide for Vivi. I would've been the worst of fathers in any case."

The great man's hand crept over his waist, guiding him to rest as he had in Conde Petie...head in the curve between neck and shoulder, close to a heart that raced as his did. He turned his hands as much as they could in their bonds——pressed them to that broad chest. Even inches shorter, Steiner was as heavy as he needed to be, and strong enough of heart and morals to keep him safe.

"You have grown as a man yourself in these short days," he murmured into one pointed ear, sending frissons down Kuja's spine. "Maturity is something gained, not innate...and someday you will see yourself as Garland should have. One day, all of them will."

"...If you're trying to seduce me, I believe it's working."

Florid color struck his cheeks. "C-Come now," he stammered. "You're teasing me. Is this about the baths?"

"Yes and no." He did hate to answer either way, for how hard his heart was pounding. "It was strange.... Not something I wouldn't have done myself, with the right amount of secrecy. But you risked a great deal regardless of what she said. It's like she thinks it can simply be ignored; in Lindblum, you and I would both be hanged."

A tight frown compressed Steiner's mouth. "Cidolfas can just go hang  _ himself _ if he thinks he's beyond reproach. I may be cohabiting with someone of my gender, but I'm no longer a married man...and I never meant for Beatrix to feel unloved. You seem to have been the one subject we could not agree on, or even peaceably differ on."

"I'm sorry to have ended your marriage."

"Better I learn now, lad. It would've been a horrid awakening when one of the Genomes spoke of you as religiously as they all do...they seem to think of you as a god, or an allegorical hero. At the very least, you are the shepherd of your people, if not the ruler of them."

He hadn't wanted to hear that. Hopefully they were exploring the limits of their species with others, not treating him like a graven idol they bowed to daily. Would the epitaph be mobbed with admirers now? "With everything I'll eventually have to do to this world," he whispered, "I don't think that's the best of things. They need to know I'm merely a man, and a flawed one at that."

"We are all so cursed." Where Steiner held him, he patiently stroked the mage's hair...perhaps afraid of what harm he could do. How silly. 

But as silly as it might be, the touch warmed him——soothed him, drawing him closer to a possible rest, in the arms of an impossibly  _ gentle _ man. Beatrix had robbed herself of kindness even Kuja had never been party to. Had she taken it for granted or merely never seen it? For now that hand drew slower strokes, from his forehead to down his back a way, and he wanted to reciprocate but couldn't.

His arms were bound...his mouth wasn't. He tilted his head up to watch the kindly petting, the unwieldy sparkle of his master's eyes——and before he knew it he'd sought the human's lips with his own.

A long pause hung there. Steiner's hand stopped in mid-motion, lips quivering under Kuja's. No movement, naught but a stilled, shocked stare.

Stupid. Why in the world had he done it? Comforting was one thing. Providing respite, that too was excusable when one couldn't exactly find a willing girl to lose their stressors with. But here, kissing a man nearly as staid as Kuja was indolent?

"I'm sorry. It's just——You were soothing me, and with Beatrix having departed...." What a foolish thing to do, why couldn't he avoid making a sentence so awkward and unenforceable? Too many emotions at once, Garland would've said.... Maybe he would've known why Kuja's frame felt fevered, while his brain was drowning.

Slowly Steiner shook his head. "Lad, I have been battling with my mind as to how to do so myself." A smile stole over those thin but smooth lips. "On the morrow we shall journey to Treno.... But you need your sleep. Is there any way I can aid you?"

"Your hand's petting had almost done it...for some reason I wanted to return the gesture. I don't quite understand, Steiner, is this love? For I'd rather see you content than anything else...."

"That's one of the many ways love feels," the great man murmured. "You can also be fearful, as I was.... Or when you sent us away from the tree, when you'd healed us. That too is love, my lad. It is a many-faceted emotion...and the hardest to know. You were created by a being incapable of love, but you yourself are not. You feel certain things when I speak this way with you, aye?"

The tremble of his heart. The way he wanted to hear Steiner's voice all night. The thought of sated, affectionate sounds that vibrated his chest and the mage's ears at once.... 

"I want to bathe in how I'm feeling."

"Then you see," the human soothed. "You are not removed from affection. Garland was foolish to call you a mistake.... He saw you as a mold he was to fill and couldn't. You broke free of the forge, Kuja. You were uncontrollable because you did not desire to be mastered. I am naught but a governor, perhaps, a vassal...."

"A  _ friend."  _ His petulant tone drew a crinkle to the corners of Steiner's eyes...it pleased the man to be thought of so closely. "I mean it. You're the only person I don't suspect of having motives right now."

"Weeks after our separation——," Steiner sighed, drawing him closer, "I believe I developed one. I yearned to see you again. My nights were filled with the sight of your face. She thought I was crazy——and told me as much, many a time. But when she caught me at your epitaph, speaking to you as though you were there, she suspected me of everything. Before she left, she even implied she thought I had claimed you."

"A thing that wouldn't be unpleasant by any means." His opinion tripped that rapid heartbeat up. "Come now. Even in this bed I know you exceed me in some way."

Harder blush now, as though Steiner were pursuing some ruffians and had tired out. "Now now. Don't tease me, lad."

"I can feel you against me," he whispered. "If I but moved, you'd be able to break me in half."

"You will have to settle for kisses this evening. Neither of us are quite prepared for more." He cupped Kuja's chin with one strong hand——the other holding him at the hip, stilling them both. "If I let you have your way, we would be late to retrieve that basque and wouldn't return until we found the new owner. I do not want you to lose something that gave you so much joy."

"Sisyphus will never let you take it." Delicately he tried to dissuade him; the loom itself was easily worth half a million gil, just with where it'd come from. "Its last owner was a black mage struck down by the Baron himself...it  _ came _ from Mysidia."

"And how would you have come to know that?"

"His blood and manamortam was still on it. It's not hard to read the entrails or last effects of the dead.... Necromancy is a rather weird thing to excel in. You hear the dead, see the dead, and summoning dead gods is fairly simple."

"You  _ knew _ where the lich was those years past, aye?"

"I didn't know Illa would strike it, but yes, I subtly followed the thing to Evil Forest. Turns out it was keeping those plant demons away...not even a Prison Cage would stir if I hadn't destroyed the lich. But  _ you _ would've had to kill the thing instead, and Vivi wouldn't have been among you."

"I count it a gain, not a loss."

He snuggled himself to Steiner's heat, barely nodding. It'd suddenly grown cold in here. "When we leave Treno...We really should head for the Black Mage Village, Captain. I fear Beatrix could harm Vivi."

"I do as well, lad. You may be right to worry." Hopefully he'd sensed the opening of a faraway door, or heard the quiet footsteps in its wake.


	11. XI

"Captured like some  _ thing."  _ He seated himself on the edge of the bed. "In Rusty's arms. Collared and chained."

"They won't last," Garnet whispered. "His mana will degrade them from the inside.... What did you hear?"

"He's worried about Vivi. Thinks Beatrix will attack the Black Mage Village." The thought had drawn a shudder into his bones; she could. The kids and all the other Genomes would protect it, but if Beatrix sacked the place and lit it on fire, Vivi would actually die. He was probably trapped in his body, unable to move.

Garnet blinked. "Kuja thinks Beatrix could harm Vivi? He's dead, Zidane...."

"I don't exactly have a soul either, Dagger. Neither does Kuja. Or any of the others. What if Vivi is alive in there, but unable to move?"

"Then...." She shook her head, shivering in the hot room. "Lindblum  _ hates _ the Black Mages. We are not considered allies with them either, as they all died. But for her to plunder the village would be declaration of war. Conde Petie would enter the first conflict they have in over a thousand years, only for the sake of their friends."

"Exactly. So what do we do?"

"You shall depart for the village, Zidane, get there first. Is there any way we can summon  _ our _ friends as well?"

He looked away. "Here's hoping someone else we trust had the same idea Kuja did."

  
  


**‡**

  
  


_ My head is killing me.... _

He turned over in his blankets——they'd left last night, hadn't they? When he'd gone to bed.... And then he'd had a strange dream, about Necron...those arms were huge.  _ His hands could easily crush me between them.... Why did I see Necron anyway? I thought it was over. _

_ «nothing is over, child. it will never be...not until gaia's hate outweighs its worth.» _

_ I don't understand. Why are you doing this?  _ Even a deaf person could hear Necron...its strange, ghostly husk. Like the pull of mana in someone's bones. And outside he swore he could hear the rest of them moving. Doors were opening, chimes were moving in the wind, if there was wind at all....

Someone's steps approached outside. He shivered in his bed.

"Hey, kiddo! You awake in there? I got a message from somebody that didn't make a lot of sense——Come on out! Need to talk to you——"

_ Jeez. Amarant must be drunk, _ he decided, but slipped out from under the covers and onto his feet. Things looked weirder...smaller, somehow, and around him his clothes felt like they were going to tear off. He could barely move.

_ «your existence has been granted. my will is the price you pay.»  _

"My existence?" Just these words aloud sounded like someone else was speaking. A deeper voice, almost...unearthly, somehow.... "Amarant, I'm in here! Could you help me with something?"

"Sure, kid, shouldn't be too hard to——" The human's head appeared in the doorway...and he blinked in shock. "What the fuck  _ happened _ to you? Looks like you're ten sizes too big for your clothes."

"I think I might be," Vivi whispered.

  
  
  


"Necron. Fucking Necron."

"Yeah." 

The story sounded unbelievable to begin with. But if Kuja could live after spending eighteen months in the Iifa Tree, Amarant Coral was about ready to believe anything. Especially with the haunted, weird look in Vivi's eyes.... Like he was hearing, or seeing, the thing his master summoned to kill them all. 

"He told me my existence was granted, but his will was the price I'd pay. I guess somehow we made a deal...."

"You wanted to live so bad you made a deal with the devil. Damn, kid, you know we love you, but if you thought  _ that _ was a good idea...."

"I just wanted to see Kuja again."

"You're gonna. He's been sentenced——"

"By Garnet, right? A life sentence, he's been made a slave, and Steiner is looking after him.... That  _ is _ what happened, right? He was wearing a collar in my dream...Steiner bathed him.... I'm not so sure what I was looking at."

"Yeah," the monk returned, beginning to sweat. How the fuck did Vivi know any of this? If he'd seen it from the same place Necron was, where souls apparently went before being filtered, or destroyed, or whatever....

"Beatrix could come here and hurt them."

"You think so too? That fat little moogle told me Kuja wanted to make sure of something. He said you had to be ready for Beatrix if she managed to come here.... And that he wanted me to pour all the Ether I could find into the graveyard."

"You did, didn't you?"

"Of course I did." He'd brought enough with him to really start craving it, though. "Every last drop. Now I'm wondering where I'll get any more."

"Kuja's palace. It had miles of them in his private chambers.... He must've had entire coffers of solid stuff lying around. You know, magebone. I'm not sure why they call it that anyway, it doesn't look like bones at all. Just crystal that grows in weird shapes." Vivi stretched his arms and turned to settle back into bed. "I need to sleep a few more hours...'m exhausted."

"Might as well. If Beatrix is gonna try to kill you, you'll need the best mind to handle that shit. What're you planning to do?"

Vivi shook his head. "I won't kill her. I'm not even going to  _ touch _ her. I don't have to." How he knew that was anyone's guess...the idea sent a frozen shiver down the older man's spine. 

Or was it Vivi himself? This room needed a bonfire.


	12. XII

The journey to Treno was made on foot. No airship captain agreed to bring Kuja, though The Invincible could've done so had it been in the area.... When he inquired as to why, Garnet informed him Mikoto was summoning the Genomes aboard, when and wherever she could find them, and planned to dock the airship directly over the Black Mage Village. Conde Petie had been informed of a possible threat, by moogle, and stood ready to cleave Beatrix in two along with whomever she brought.

As it turned, Wendy had set herself as one of Kuja's allies, and already suspected Beatrix of much.

Freya was unable to travel. They'd discovered her pregnancy in the days after Kuja's sentence. Fratley refused to be away from her and offered only that they would come if required. Steiner thought that might cost many unborn babes, and the Genome selfsame warned against her involvement.

Lani was with Cid; Beatrix might be there as well. The former had likely been hired.

Quina had relocated to The Invincible's galley, citing their need for yummy-yummies. Kuja's act of healing the Qu had led to the most unflappable loyalty.

Eiko was not allowed to voice her opinion, but privately sent along a Phoenix Pinion and a tiny pinned diamond. The only place Steiner could fix it without suspicion had been Kuja's navel, when they made camp. The Genome's harsh yell of pain had been a louder sound than he'd made yet...and a tiny bluish fracture had appeared in his collar.

They stood here now, in the central way into Treno——looking around at what little had changed.

"Even if it breaks, lad, you may not wish to tell anyone. The tale of you being a threat to Beatrix would incense her even more." Steiner frowned with due sympathy, however; many nobles gawked at the sight of one of their own reduced to servitude. The few who said anything whispered in tones that escaped the human's ears and reddened the Genome's.

"Stay with me, lad." He placed a hand on Kuja's back, took the chains in a stern-looking but gentle grip.

"Yes, Captain." Two words, dutiful ones, that ensured neither of them would have their intentions misread.

  
  


_ "I want to ensure nothing happens to you that you do not require. Back there——," Steiner murmured, stare on the fire instead of where he wished it to be, "administering your bath, there were moments I was unsure whether you complied willingly or otherwise. I wish to remedy that." _

_ "It can be confusing, I imagine." Kuja shook his head. "Nothing was cruel about it. Everything was necessary for my health, and when pressed for further care you provided it expertly." Though he stretched where the little gem had been applied, wincing. It would probably take some time to heal. _

_ "Your will and mine must be aligned, lad. If they are not, I might end up harming you unnecessarily.... This fate of yours being harm enough, you know." _

_ "You're unofficially appointed the new General of Alexandria now, I imagine. But referring to you with that title wouldn't be proper, nor would any informality.... Silence is a virtue in dangerous straits. But others..., well, I suppose if I simply said 'Yes, Captain', or 'No, Captain', you could know I agreed or disagreed fully with your orders. And no one would notice," the mage whispered, pink touching his cheeks. _

_ "Do you need some rest, my lad? I don't intend to leave you out here for the monsters; my hearing is excellent, and your instincts further so." _

_ "Yes, Captain." _

_ "And I'll aid you to sleep. You can't lie awake all night, or you'd end up dying of exhaustion." The color creeping over Kuja's cheeks now was even brighter, and likely not for his position by the fire. "Come on, then." _

_ "Yes, Captain." The Genome sprang to his feet before Steiner could. _

  
  


A clever way to keep them stable. He'd placed Kuja in their shared tent, switched the direction of those chains, and the lad had managed complete silence as he aided that young form to rest with an oiled hand. 

Surely, those perfect teeth had nipped his neck, that soft mouth panting hotly in his ears, but his excitement for the act had been thrilling. Kuja might not have been touched so intimately by someone else, nor so gently. And whatever mana one could strip from him by denying him Ether, they could not keep it from his body in its natural state.

Where he stood thinking on their direction, Steiner pondered the bare amount he'd tasted, almost on impulse.... Sweet, energetic. Enough that it could be bottled for the purpose itself. And Kuja turned to look at him.

"Captain, are you ill? Your face is red."

He shook his head. "Nay, lad, I merely had a goodly tonic last night before retiring. It would suit me more in greater quantities."

Now the Genome's face reddened warmly. "Yes, Captain," he breathed, eyes gleaming. It'd been a good idea to fit him with an armored waistcloth; he fairly sweated there.

Steiner could relate. "Which way to King's auction house again, lad?"

  
  


**‡**

  
  


"Of course, Captain Steiner. We've kept the loom away from other eyes——," Sisyphus gave a look of pity to his former ward-turned-employer, "as his father would  _ never  _ forgive us for allowing his priceless antique to be sold. Especially not to someone who intended to destroy it."

"Destroy?!" Beside him Kuja stiffened.

"Regent Cidolfas came last night to see to the purchase of everything the late Lord Anchorite owned. I heard a few words I shouldn't have; I'm afraid the floor of his room makes eavesdropping very simple. As a result I declined to make any available...I told the regent they'd been sold to a private collector. Further, that  _ she _ would be very angry to know he wanted them."

A relieved sigh came to both men, the mage's inaudible. Behind him, Lady Sheepington approached with Queen Stella, nearly missing Kuja completely until she turned to seat herself.

"Why, it's——" She leapt out of her chair and rushed with clicking hooves to Sisyphus's side. "Oh, no! Dreadful! Whatever have they  _ done _ to you, my dear friend?"

"He has been sentenced to service," Steiner answered regretfully, shaking his head. "Have you not heard?"

"I thought it was rumor. The crown really did enslave him? Regent Cid came here with that horrid General of his, grinning the whole way. A moment after he spoke, most of us were filing out.... Our Queen wanted to slap him with her parasol!"

"An awful thing to consider." Sisyphus sighed and removed his monocle to clean it. "But none of us intend to take it seriously, or at least as far as we can manage to ignore it. You are still an individual I trust and defer to.... We're in public mourning instead of speaking poorly of you. I wouldn't allow your peerage to do so, sire."

Kuja shook his head wearily.

"Oh dear. Do make yourself scarce, Captain, the regent appears to have returned.... And Ovinia Sheepington, if you say one word about their presence here, I shall see you scandalized." The auctioneer coughed into a hand, quickly shooing the group away.  _ "To his room. I'll open it. Hurry!" _

They didn't need to be told twice. Steiner hefted Kuja over his shoulder, bearing him off down the hall; the noble ewe blew a parting kiss from behind her fan, one the knight barely saw and his lad certainly did.

In front of them a latch clicked, nested unseen into a nondescript wall panel. He pushed forward, it gave, and the two disappeared into the room, booted Genome feet closing the entry behind them.

  
  


**‡**

  
  


_ "I told you, Sisyphus, I asked who bought them, and Hildagarde said she didn't. Garnet herself could not confirm she had. No female I questioned gave me the answer. Who has bought those things, and why will you not defer?" _

_ "The city of Treno belongs to Alexandria, sire. I am afraid I cannot divulge.... I do not disrespect my patrons so. And if you had purchased our late King's items, I would have told no one. You see, they did not belong to Kuja at all. He simply made use of them in his stay here." _

_ "But a Mysidian basque loom! I would've paid you four times its worth! Hildagarde is in need of something to occupy herself with in her delicate state. She's gone quite mad with his sentence and refuses to speak to anyone." _

_ "Terrible shame, sire. But I do not have the privilege to tell you who owns them now. I would be disbarred as Treno's conservator if I even attempted to." _

He sat staring down through the grate. They had firmly locked the room, barred its entry, and not even Quina Quen would've been able to open it shy of destroying the mansion walls.... A mercy, though if Beatrix had accompanied Cid, the windows were another risk. 

Dark glass stood mounted where the stained glass used to be, black windows Treno's only clue to mourning both King and his son. A portrait of the two together had been hung in the great hall.

"Stay back, lad. Come and rest yourself." The human's words behind him turned his head.

"Yes, Captain."

_ "Where is he? Has he visited you at all?" _

_ "No, sire, we do not allow criminals in the auction house. Not since Salamander Coral have we tolerated it. And though his bounty has been removed he is no longer welcome. May I ask you to sit or leave? I'm afraid another auction is set to begin." _

_ "I will stay. Perhaps I can find some nicety for Eiko or Hilda this evening, even if I've missed the loom." _

_ "Very good, Regent. Please bring your proxy with you; she must remain in your custody. We discourage anyone from leaving the hall once bids have started." _

"Lovely," Kuja muttered; a familiar brunette woman had joined Cid, both proceeding to their seats. Beatrix said something he couldn't hear; one gloved hand covered hers and folded their fingers together.

_ Worse. _ He shook his head...poor Hilda. Again she was a woman scorned. "It doubts me you will ever have to worry about Beatrix again, Captain...." Though the knowledge hung cold and hard over his mind. If Cidolfas was having another affair, it might be longer before they returned to Lindblum.... He and Steiner would have to be very careful.

He rose from his crouch, turned...back to Steiner, who'd drawn the canopy over the bed and sat waiting.

"Whatever's the matter, lad?"

Kuja sighed. "Beatrix found another person who hates me as much as she does. Cid's taken her as a lover." The reply sagged Steiner there on the highly stuffed pallet, giving him to sadly frown.

"I suppose it was inevitable." He shrugged himself out of his cuirass; a lighter, leather one, for the fact neither needed noisy armor. Kuja too wore only the metal collar and chains, nearly devoid of sound when he moved. "Come here. We will think no more on it tonight."

"Were you serious, Captain," he wondered, "when you spoke of that  _ goodly tonic _ you had to have more of? You tasted me...."

"I did." The answering smile gave him a sweet shiver down his spine. "And I was; you need no rush to be debauched. Especially not after the way you were treated by your old master."

"But...." He slowly seated himself on the bed, slipped his ankle boots off, "I assure you I'm not a novice to the throes of passion."

"With a woman, aye?"

He flushed hot. "Yes. Are you taking so much time because of my words in Alexandria?"

"No, lad. It is because I ache to make love to you. I was not given reign over my passions after she found me at your epitaph; her refusal was followed by no more acts of any kind." The man had become an ascetic and hungered for likely that reason alone. 

Or he truly loved Kuja beyond his means to speak of——and  _ this _ was something the Genome had never had, but dearly needed. He sank into his bed and accepted Steiner's motion to move his chains.

A link broke between them.

Steiner gasped. "This was new mythril. The crack in your collar, and now the broken chain.... You'll have to keep pace with me when we walk. You can't be fully restrained anymore unless we find a synthesist.... I must learn whom."

"No." The mage pointed to the softly flickering hearth. "Given the heat I can do it myself. It requires no magic."

"Then for now...," Those great hands hesitated where he sat, "I think we ought to know the pace  _ you _ seek." He took hold of Kuja's and drew them to his lips. "Even chained, your beauty never fades. Your features are finer still than I have ever seen."

"You tease me," Kuja whispered, "but I feel it in my heart. You've not lied to me yet." Inch by inch the distance between them faded.

"I would never." 

"I wanted to touch you earlier. May I do so now?" The muscles that had sheltered him, pleasured him.... They needed lavishment, and Steiner a good deal of pleasure himself.

A slow, surrendering nod. Trust.... When he'd almost destroyed this man. His spine wobbled. But those lovely dark eyes did not judge him, nor did the knight behind them.... Slowly he managed himself to sit atop those thick, strong thighs.

"You are so beautiful, Captain." His gentle murmur drew crimson into the older man's cheeks.

"Whyever do you say that...?"

"You were for me, even when you thought you stood alone. You risked your life, lost your marriage, and still defied creation to give me back to myself. You attempt even now to defy my sentence, though Necron's might will suffer no mastery over it and my bonds cannot last regardless. And always you seem to cherish me."

"I cherish your life," Steiner returned, "and the promise it holds. If only my love for you will keep Gaia alive, then I shall take up my sword and defend our lands." One hand reached for Kuja, where he trembled. "Fear nothing outside this chamber, lad, none of it shall touch you."

_ « . . . no harm can come to you again . . . » _

A whisper, nothing more. But he drew closer to Steiner, huddled there——the hands that gently covered his head told him even if the man didn't hear it, he knew the instinct and trouble in Kuja's behavior.  _ The bargain.... _ He might remember something there, in the back of his consciousness.

Around them, the auction proceeded. He burrowed to his handler, wanting nothing more than warmth, to forget the faraway presence of both Cid and Beatrix, to lose his bonds and finally be freed....

It would come in time. For now he had Adelbert Steiner and the perplexing rush of his heartbeat. Why did he feel this way? What made him draw his hands to the human's hair, slowly stroke it? Bare silvery threads showed...merely a hint of the decade between them. Steiner had more experience, greater control.... His eyes closed there, warm color spread over those cheeks.

Kuja had treated many women in kind, but never a man. And he knew he barely exceeded Steiner in height, certainly not in weight——nor in girth, he determined slowly, face heating. But the man had already touched him so.... Perhaps a bit of turnabout here.

He stroked that smooth hair with one hand, ventured with the other. All the while he watched, looking for any sign of alarm; all to be found was a surprised, tender gleam in those dark eyes. It  _ had _ been long for him.

"If you had told me this would happen, years ago, I'd've been quite surprised." Steiner gasped with his touch, admitting, "I dreamed about you last night. Not the 'rescuing you from harm' sort of dreams."

"Was it anything like this?"

"We were in the palace——A celebration. Perhaps a masquerade. Humans wore animal masks; our noble greater animals wore human ones. It was quite amazing, really...." So was the sudden seize of his teeth over his lip. "Oh, lad. Have you been thinking of this long?"

"Since you relieved me in the bath," Kuja returned. "I do apologize for biting your shoulder, but I'd've rather not made a noise that drew the guards in to watch."

"She wanted you. It wasn't hard to tell."

He shook his head. "I'd far rather not use it now.... I don't know if you're aware, but it was quite difficult. Most of my encounters with the fairer sex involved no form of penetration. No one but a man, or a taller woman than I, would've really tolerated my form for long."

"I easily relate.... Care and slow movement were my tactics then. Rather not for the length of me, though." He stilled with Kuja's hold, sighing out a breath. "Lad, no one has touched me so since her departure. I have not wanted it." He certainly wanted  _ this, _ the gentle squeeze and firm stroking rhythm. "...You know how to touch, don't you?"

"I was never given reign over my desires. Garland wanted me to know nothing of pleasure." Even as he said so, those thick fingers played down his back, to his nates.... They were of the same mind here. Better to relinquish control, to trust.

He slipped from those thighs to settle into his pallet, the soft, comforting down..., watching his governor through a haze of lashes. "But I have always wanted," he whispered, "to know how it feels. I am not Beatrix, but I do desire to be loved...to learn what you know of it, Steiner. Your touch is so secure. It's as though you aren't afraid of me at all."

"Should I fear you?" He drew up on an elbow there.

"Never," Kuja breathed. "Never again. I don't want anyone to fear me, I just want to be loved...."

"I will love you, lad. I'll give you everything you desire of me, even my life." He advanced, the Genome gave——a heavier, stronger body than his compressing him to the softness there. "I only ask that you tell me whether I hurt you, where to touch you.... I would not leave you bereft of anything or pained for my pleasures." Gently he cupped Kuja's chin, lips touching his forehead. "There is so much of this world you have not seen."

"Show it to me...." This close, he felt the human's heart thundering behind his ribs, smelled the deep, virile musk of his body. "So much of you was misunderstood then."

"I felt it," Steiner murmured there. "I was an oaf, a great brainless hulk only suited for barbarism. No one truly took the time to know me, and when I married her, I was simply a man for a woman. I didn't have my own identity." But here, with Kuja, he had to know he did. Why else would they be so close?

Slowly he sat up, eyes searching those dark ones, speechless at another soul's willing warmth. He lightly pulled that linen tunic. "It must be hot in here."

"You're a furnace, lad. I could not leave unless you wished me to."

"Don't go," Kuja pleaded. "Not with them down there." Those voices hadn't stopped, the hall was not yet empty. But with all that sound, no one would hear two men here, yearning for one another. "Love me...."

The canopy pulled closed, in one thick hand. Black velvet shrouded them in perfect night——here, now, they'd have their rest.

He leaned back into the pillows, splayed thighs open for that touch, those kisses. How long had it been since he felt  _ anything _ for anyone? Years before his sentence, before his rescue from death by someone who had every reason to hate him, every right to want him dead. Those fingers stroked the wound Steiner had inflicted, that tightly-sewn, healing cleave.... Too tender; he gasped in that gentle embrace.

"It still pains you...." Dark hair brushed his hip——slowly, carefully, smooth lips pressed there, kissing that raw flesh. "You will have quite the scar."

"I don't care," Kuja whispered, forlorn. "Just being alive is enough." But his thoughts scattered, like windblown seeds.... The knight's thick tongue tasted his skin there, a face that had not been shaved in days whispered stubble against his body. He knew the ways of love, the need burgeoning in the mage's frame.... 

When mouth met cock, he could barely breathe. His hands found Steiner's hair and pulled.

"I've found something lovely..., eh, lad?"

"Ah," he agreed, a cry shaking on his lips. "God——" Oh, that mouth. That expert, hot tongue, tracing heat over him, lips sucking him deep. "D—Don't stop, oohhh...." Control was lost to him. He bonelessly gave up, staring upward as those strong hands lifted his thighs, head fitting seamlessly between them.... "Yes. S...So warm...." Hadn't he said he wanted to taste more of it? He'd get a mouthful if he didn't stop..., oh, but wild beasts couldn't make Kuja refuse, and not even hellhounds would make Steiner cease now. He worked himself to that sweet mouth, arched his back——Glorious heat, enviable suction....

She'd lost a man who could truly adore her, for the wills of a libertine who'd throw her away. Kuja had the knight now and would never relent.

Far away from him, it seemed, a gentle pressure worked in——rubbed, teased, worked more of him to surrender. Those fingers made him flutter..., but softly, easily, his scent and their passion giving more movement forth. And still that mouth locked tight, sucked, drawing him closer and closer to bliss. "Yes," he lauded breathlessly, "f-feels good...." That healing, vacuous kiss...he could lose himself for days in that noble hold. "L-Let me..., I want to taste you...."

"Soon enough," came the reply, hand stroking firmly, deeply. "I'm quite fashed from our travels, lad, I need the mana."

"Ah—!" Two fingers? No, three...stretching, working him to ecstasy between those lips, those hands.... His hands tightened into fists in that silky hair, his breaths sharpened into cries—— "I can't," he managed, "it's... _ Ooohhhh——" _ Blinding, sweet heat down his spine, the lock of those lips sucking him dry.... He pulled, tighter, racking over those shoulders, helplessly gasping.

Below him, against his inner thighs, that wide neck worked...swallowing, Steiner was actually drinking him.... He pulled slowly away, eyelids heavy with lust.

"I want you," Kuja panted. "Inside me, Adelbert Steiner. Don't you leave me."

"Never. I don't care who's out there, lad.... Come up here. Take the lead." He had to—— Between them, against the sheets, that heavy cock stretched full with need. How she could disavow such might.... 

He lunged upward, flattened Steiner to the bed. "Imagine...only her, Captain? No one else?" Not by the way he groaned at Kuja's touch, keened upward. He needed the Genome just as much, for as long as he did. "A shame. I'll enjoy every moment."

"I hope you do.... Your scent will inundate mine. I could think of worse."

"Was it a goodly tonic, Captain? Truly?" For the way Steiner looked at him, his lust blazed hot again...stoking a fire he didn't think he could quench. The rest of his natural days would be spent with him? He knew of direr fates. "I didn't know a man who'd only touched women could love this way."

"You haven't allowed yourself to be loved, lad, or to be given any part of someone else.... Show me what you need, and I will gladly supply it." Such strong muscles, firm and solid frame...Only for him and all of his desires. "You will never have to wonder if I am yours. I would not use you as Cidolfas does Hilda."

"I would not  _ allow _ you to. Betraying me that way would mean your death." In this, he imagined he was right.

"And you are mine, lad, you were given to my will in this life. Necron may have you in all else, but this...." One great hand rose to trail its fingers down Kuja's chest. "In this, you were sentenced to my hold. I will not mistreat you; my honor as a knight would never permit it."

"You are so gentle." He found himself smiling there. "But I am a man, Captain. I can take a great deal of discipline. I wonder...." His nails, returning the caress. "Can you? For you've been untouched all this time...." How that man moaned at his touch, every inch a mortal, given to lust as any other was. "I've not been given such command. I'll need it often."

"I shall give it as often as you need."

"You're so firm...." He drew in, tasted those smooth lips——they battled there, mouths a solid seam, exchanging breaths as nobles might parry words. Not here; there was nothing refined in this room but a mage touching a knight.  _ His _ knight, he reflected...Steiner was for him, and had been all this time. That mighty form was there for his delight.

Firmer mouth parted under his. Now that tongue ventured in, sliding along his own, tasting him deeper than any had tried to. Ale, gysahl pickles—— Heavens, a robust flavor all its own, that mouth. Steiner's arms wrapped around his back, drew him closer...to a warmth that would surrender to none but him. Garnet was his queen, but Kuja was his lad and would remain so.

_ «know what you wish...in time he will die.» _

_ All must die someday,  _ he agreed, but the knowledge was a miserable one.  _ Let me know him as long as I can, Necron.... Please. He is for me as much as you are, my comfort until their end.... _

_ «we will give you what you need. take for yourself what you will.» _

"You are thinking, Kuja...." Hands stroked his hair. "It grieves me to see you frown so." Did he know what exchange had been made, what little Kuja could have until he was gone? Steiner would only live another sixty years, and the Genome would not change by one of them.... Only the thought of it burned his eyes.

"The future...only that. My natural life will be longer than any of yours."

"Aye, lad, and until my death I am here for you." That deep, strong heartbeat...he pressed his ear to Steiner's chest, dwelled there for the knight captain's life. How soon it would be gone.

Regrets be damned. He kissed the human's sternum where it showed beneath his skin.  _ I will miss you when you are gone. _ For now, he had this, he had Steiner. And everyone else could go where they wished and do what they wanted. He rose, splayed fingers over that strong chest, trailed pointed nails down those muscles...beneath his touch, those dark eyes closed, lower lashes stilling. "I'll take the pace," he agreed, only for the girth of that turgid cock. "But only as far as you do."

Steiner's hands slid down his back, over his flanks——stroked his tail and beneath it, as Kuja straddled hard muscle to rub sweetly onto him. "So soft," the knight whispered. "Take it slowly. I would not harm you if I could help it."

"I know." He reached behind to where they would join, stretched himself gently. That lovely thick organ streamed with need they shared..., working him open at his descent, a deep, hot burn. None had known him this way——he moved, giving himself to that pressure, the advance, leaving soft, slippery traces along the side of Steiner's cock. "Mh...."

"Slowly, Kuja," he implored. "You're so very tight."

"Ah...." His weight took him down, spread him open. Shifting gave more scent, more ease...Before too long, his hips met Steiner's, spine shaking where he sat impaled. "How did she——" Beatrix was a woman, the fairer of the sexes had their ways.... Kuja was left with a tight burn inside, a trembling surrender, heat blooming in his face and through his body. "Lords. It's so thick."

Steiner's teeth seized his lower lip. "It's no wonder you guard yourself. I could expire between those nates of yours." His hand reached for Kuja's awakening cock. "Let me ease you, lad, it must be painful...."

"It's not so agonizing. I could take a hundred such intrusions...." Ah, but though it hurt a bit, it wasn't unpleasant...that firm stretch came with a deep, pleasurable throb. His pulse wasn't only in his chest, but inside Kuja as well, to his very bones. They'd ceased to be two and now were one. "I wouldn't have you leave me for a minute."

Those slowly stroking hands smoothed over his thighs, cupped his hip bones, teased frissons along his spine. "You are lovely, my lad...I have not been held so tightly in my life."

"Don't move...," he whispered, "let me...."

A soft lift of his hips, Steiner's mouth parted open with panting breaths. Sweet expression there. Vulnerability, the kind he felt himself...they both trembled. He covered the knight's hands with his, folding their fingers together. The man held him in thrall, in more ways than one.... He  _ loved _ him.

Kuja truly had adoration here, devotion..., the kind he would grieve and cherish a century from now. He rose, sank, gasped on that length. And Steiner gave as much as he did, those hips moved beneath his.

"...Does it pain you, lad?"

"No," he answered, and meant it. The pace had been found, he'd fully opened to his governor.... He pulled him by the arms, to hold Kuja there in that firm embrace. 

Mouths met, seamed, kissed, heat streaming between them. Steiner stripped his breeches slowly down his thighs, unbuckled the waistcloth where it'd settled at Kuja's hips...soon they were bared to one another, skin to skin.... 

The mage's hips rolled, drawing a dizzy pant from his knight. Sweat and ruddy heat bloomed down his muscular frame. "Look at you," Kuja whispered. "You're so lovely...." He couldn't resist leaning forward, tasting the gleam there at neck and shoulder.

"Never so," Steiner breathed. "You are." The lock of his arms tightened, cords showing instinctive need. The lust there, to give him what knowledge she had abandoned. He pulled, that heavier frame covered his once more...warming him, hiding him from all.

He stared up, bespelled by such strange devotion. "Love me...."

"Have I my reign, lad?"

"Give it to me," Kuja urged. "You have been so long without it, show me what you need...." Deep, firm thrust—— "Yes. More...."

"Beautiful creature.... How you spent so long upon this world without love, I could never fathom." He lifted Kuja by the hips, held him there——drove deep, wringing a cry upward to their ears. "So tight, lad, so soft.... I must have more, I cannot stop."

"Do it, Steiner, take me...."

They'd hear the two of them down there, soon enough. Kuja's hands seized sheets upward, he wilted to the pillows...cock bouncing with those thrusts, sweat pattering onto his skin. "Yes. Yes, Captain, more. More——" Ah, but the speed, the depth he'd chosen...So much better. His spine burned. Steiner's mouth sought his ear, breath sending shudders into him. He gripped that cock, seized every inch he could, racked by that steady pace.... "Ooohhh——"

"You're like silk around me, lad, you feel so good——"

"Ah,  _ ah——" _ He lifted, turned, one thigh pressing to Steiner's belly, ankle over his shoulder. "Yes...Deeper, harder——" The bedposts creaked with those thrusts, he grabbed for a pillow and emptied his cries into the down. And above him, inside him, that strong, needful man worked him to quivering ecstasy. How could Beatrix choose a milksop like Cid? Why would she flee such ardor? A hand covered his mouth, he sucked two fingers in and held them there....

Thrusts quickened, heavy pants warning of their end...Steiner buried his face into Kuja's calf and groaned, frame shivering.

"Please——," He could barely breathe, "give it to me...inside.... Fill me——"

Liquid heat threaded in, deep, stretching pulses...strangled sound vibrated his skin. He stilled, held Kuja where he was, one hand slowly smoothing down his thigh. Slippery softness there between them.

He didn't want it to end. His tail wound and locked there around Steiner's waist, he worked his leg back over...pulled the knight close, into his own shaky hold, to his thinner and assuredly weaker frame. "Don't go," he entreated. "Stay inside...as long as you can.... Keep me warm...."

"My dear lad...." One hand reached for the bedcover they'd pushed away...drew the cool, silken fabric over them. His hair had tousled into damp raven locks with their passion. "You shall be the very end of me, you know."

"Not until I  _ let _ you leave." The thought was heartbreaking. "Sleep here...on me. With me...." How warm and sweaty they were, how lovely it was.

The knight gave a soft agreeing yawn. "I don't imagine I could move if I tried."

  
  


**‡**

  
  


_ His dreams were a mire. _

_ Steiner moved through the palace——A memory, he thought; here the guards rushed about, Beatrix headed for the gates.... Wasn't this years ago? Zorn and Thorn, those aging jesters, flapped down the hall, Brahne's deep voice thundering to his ears. _

_ "Adelbert Steiner!" _

_ Beatrix...in front of him, sharp tongue summoning him to where a shrouded figure waited outside, in dark jacket, divesting itself of a long, curly-tipped hat to reveal long blonde hair and perfectly kempt curls. _

_ "Yes, General?" How loud his armor was this evening. He looked out where she pointed—— That lad. Now that he had his leave to peer into those pale blue eyes.... Rouged face, long-fingered hands in immaculate white gloves.... _

_ "That's Lord Anchorite," he murmured. "Here to see Her Majesty, I'd wager." _

_ Her head swiveled on her neck. "So you know that man." _

_ "Not well. I saw him last year during Princess Garnet's birthday, with the other nobles...King's only son, General. Someday he'll be appointed the conservatorship of Treno; we'd better be courteous to him." Those eyes. How had he not known those lovely eyes belonged to Kuja? For here, in this memory, he was all the comelier.... _

_ "Are you so touched by his beauty, then?" _

_ "I grow weary of your taunts, Beatrix. Are they necessary?" He straightened himself where he stood. "The Queen will need to see him." _

_ "She's not seeing anyone until tomorrow. If you think he needs entertaining, you may do so." Beatrix turned on a heel. This had not been what happened...she'd ordered him to see Brahne, while she remained to dispatch Anchorite if necessary.... And here, the conceited look on that powdered face gave way to a knowing one. "Leave me out of it." _

_ "Very well." He'd not question this...simply opened the door, heading out the gate to look at their guest. _

_ "I didn't expect such welcome," Anchorite——Kuja, disguised to keep himself from Garland——purred, long lashes dusting their orbits. "What a strong and capable man you are." _

_ "Do come with me, lad. I'll see you're set to a comfortable room and looked after." He offered his hand, beckoning the young and nubile Genome in. _

_ Anchorite followed without a pause, sweet-smelling frame provocatively close.... Around them, the sky seemed to darken further, torches muting in the night. Barely ten feet had passed them before they reached the square——a strangely empty one. The noble passed him, ducking into an alley. _

_ He followed. "You're a secretive one," he murmured, watching the sway of that hair, the inviting curve of the lad's hips. _

_ "Don't pretend I wasn't expected." Anchorite whirled smoothly around on his feet. "I didn't come to see the Queen, Captain Steiner...I came for  _ you." _ How soft and supple those limbs, how kissable those painted lips looked in this bare light. "Show me the greater of the kingdom's hospitality...." _

_ Steiner slid his helm away, set it aside——the noble's hat joined it. Those fluttering lashes beckoned him, the lad slipping into an alcove...nothing here but cool stone, dark sky, and luminous magical eyes.  _

_ "You are beautiful, Lord Anchorite.... A man could be driven to insanity just looking at you." _

_ "Madness sounds inviting. Come and take me." One finger bent in invitation. "Here, where no one will bother us...." Against the wall, he slowly peeled away his coat, his gloves, willowy body shining with the stars. _

_ Steiner thirsted for such loveliness. "A man like me, touching you.... You're so mischievous, my lad." That skin, that body, before they'd marred it. Slender arms opened for him——he advanced, pressed Anchorite to the stone behind him. "So sweet and tender you are." _

_ "Let me taste you," that lovely boy husked, dropping to his knees. _

_ What heaven. Deft fingers unbuckled his belts, unlaced his breeches—— Oh, and soft, sweet lips trickled between his thighs. A doubtlessly saucy tongue touched him, licked the sweat from his skin, laved the tightening sinews around his cock.  _

_ "You...ooh...Naughty lad, your father wouldn't approve of this at all, would he?" _

_ "I'm twenty-two, he doesn't govern my behavior so much as he protects it...." That was all Anchorite offered before his mouth slid wetly to the knob of Steiner's cock and down.  _

_ Sumptuous sucking heat——glorious, soft lock around him. He couldn't help but hold that silky-haired head to him, hide the lad from anyone who'd look...hips shuddering at the clandestine kiss. Sweet, beautiful man, barely a man at all by his years. 1776...not a long stretch, it was but 1798 now. And this was still illegal by Brahne's draconic laws; from the hold of those lips and the lusty lashing of his tongue, Anchorite didn't give a damn. Thin hands held him upright, pulled as he shivered.... That gorgeous noble drank everything he was offered, every drop, as though he were an exotic little bird sipping bloom after bloom. _

_ He rose away on his heels, stared upward into Steiner's eyes. "More," he whispered, love-drenched pout gleaming. "I want all of you...." _

_ "I will be gentle." _

_ "Never mind that. Just take me." He pulled up his blouse, held the hem between his teeth...exposing his sleek belly, reaching for the lace of his trousers. Acutely Steiner noticed the flick of that long, downy tail between his ankles, the curl at the end.... In this dream his tail was as blonde as his hair, and no feathers could be found in that coiffure at all...A perfect mask to who he'd really been beneath it. _

_ He grabbed for the noble's hands, pinned them to the stone under his. Long legs lifted to wrap around his waist, ankles locking at his lower back...he drew away, slid those silk trousers down Anchorite's hips, found where that soft skin gave inward. _

_ "Ah...Yes, there...Give me your cock." _

_ "Satyric lad. You're a rakehell of another kind," Steiner lauded, heart thudding in his ears. "I'll give you just what you need." Freed and erect, he pressed to those soft, wobbly flanks——and thrust deep, sheathing into tight, smooth heat. How that reedy lad wailed. _

_ "Hard," he ordered, "claim me hard and deep...."  _

_ Those eyes drew him into sweet madness. Unable to resist, powerless to flee, he worked that tender-bodied sylph——mastered that nubile nymph of a man, thrusts smashing them both into the wall. Anchorite pulled his hands free of Steiner's grip and grabbed for his pauldrons, held tight as the older man pinioned him. _

_ "Ah, ah——more, don't stop——" Rouge wasn't the source of those flushed cheeks now, it was all lust...and his powder dripped away with beads of sweat, trails down his face and neck.... None of it mattered. He cried with need and the furious pace. _

_ Cold air broke over the knight's skin. He pushed——the stone gave way to swan's down, the starry night to velvet shrouds.... He pressed that lovely frame to silken sheets, drew away to watch the gleaming of those eyes. Beautiful boy. Blonde hair threaded through with silvery pale locks, curls sharpened upright to long feathers.... Clothes simply melted around their bodies. _

_ "You love me...don't you?" Sweet pink lips parted for the barest of whispers. _

_ "Always," Steiner returned...lowering to kiss them, to taste the mana flowing into his mouth. Every inch of Anchorite——of Kuja——was an ecstasy he'd never know again. He couldn't just let the lad go.... No matter what the sentence brought, or who came to slay him, he would never let his lad go.... "Don't leave me, lad. Stay——" For the haze around them had begun to darken, shrouding him in sleep once more. _

_ "Ours is an imperfect bliss," Kuja breathed, his face fading away. _


	13. XIII

They must have slept too long. Treno's sky gave way to threads of morning..., and here, Kuja woke not in his bed but a tent, slowly blinking the dark away.

Beside him, only an empty bedroll hinted at where Steiner had been; the chains had been roped back together, as best they could be. He didn't mourn their abrupt departure so much as he did the loss of warmth.

Coffee, or something similar, attracted his nose. Carefully he managed himself to the tent flap, looked out.... They weren't alone, he realized with a flush, and he was still nude. Or he'd been borne from the city in such a rush they hadn't had time to dress him.

"He's awake, guys!" Cheery as ever, that Zidane. Impish eyes locked to his, their owner turning. "You sleep okay, Kuja?"

He nodded, still bewildered over the experience. "How did we get out here? Mikoto didn't relocate us, did she?"

"Nah, Amarant picked you up and Steiner followed. Kinda had to get out in a hurry...Cid seems to think it was all a farce. Can't imagine why he would——," The younger Genome smirked, "I mean, it's not as though you spared our lives or anything. Garnet didn't think you had the time to get back, and it looks like she was right.... Someone told him you were in Treno. And you are  _ never _ gonna guess who grew two feet overnight."

"Vivi."

"Oh...kay, so you did guess. Ol' Scarlet Hair is all shook up from how it happened. He says the village is hunky dory, but Vivi just picked up and booked it out. Said he had to see you...something about Necron, whatever that means."

"I had the weirdest dream last night."

"Yeah? Well, Amarant saw your _ weird dream, _ or at least the result. You were hard as a brick the whole way...we thought you might've been hopped up on Cactuar venom or something. I mean, damn, you couldn't have saved your erections for something less social? Even I don't have those kinds of moments outside an inn." Lightly nudging him, though, Zidane grabbed a cup and handed it over. "Drink up, bro, we have to get you back to the castle. Cid is gonna flip if he even  _ thinks _ you're anywhere unguarded."

Kuja drank. "There's something I have to tell you."

"Please don't let it be what I think it is."

He shook his head, sitting as best he could; the rope didn't make his chains any less accessible, thankfully enough. "I don't know what you suspect, but I've gotten used to this sentence of mine. It has its good points." Being alive, with every part of his body intact.... Still having friends, for whatever reason they could think of to love him.

"You did. Dammit, Kuja. You're sleeping with  _ Rusty?" _

"Come now, I need some form of comfort. I'd rather not have a woman try to love me; if I Tranced even once, I'd tear the poor thing up. At least Steiner wasn't a shrinking violet back there on the Crystal World."

"Yeah, but...." One gloved hand worked weakly in the air. "Steiner? Seriously, bro, he's a total pill. You like the boring kind?"

"I surely like the  _ stiff _ kind," he returned wryly. Away from them Freya spat a stream of black coffee.

"Did you hear that?"

She coughed, wiping her chin and ascot. "How could I not? Good heavens, Kuja, there's ribald and just plain  _ lewd."  _ But she turned to fix relieved green eyes on him. "You must be in good spirits; I've never heard that kind of humor from you."

"Until we get back to the castle, I don't know how much more of it you will."

"Regent Cid has begun to annoy me." She poured a fresh serve. "I know for a fact he is having an affair with Beatrix, and worse is that Lady Hilda may have no clue as of yet. Beatrix seemed happy with Steiner until she caught him out by the epitaph...." Shaking her head, she related, "No one's really been there except our number, the Genomes, and your various friends. I doubt Eiko will be allowed in our company for some time."

"Are you safe out here, Freya? I heard you were unable to travel——" Though her coat would hide most of the evidence, she should've stayed behind in Burmecia. He found himself worrying to nausea over it.

Might be coffee and no food, as well.

She nodded. "Another three weeks, I suspect, but most of the insecure days have already passed. I can feel them moving now and then."

"How many?"

"Not sure...Twelve, maybe. Our birth rate is about to explode. But if I have as many as I fear I will, the Cleyran separatists will have to come back. Wei and Kal's children are already there.... As well as Dan and Learie's. I'm not certain if Claire or Kildea will bother."

"Puck will probably end up marrying one of your daughters, should you end up having any.... That would make the Dragon Knights not only protectors of the realm, but possible successors..., unless the little scamp decides to abdicate."

"We fear he has," Freya whispered there. "And yes, the line of succession passes to us if there are no royals." A troubled expression crossed her maw.

"You would be a noble queen indeed. And short of malfeasance by your subjects or war, regicide would not be a concern." That or total accident, only one of the possibilities he feared. Freya and her good Sir Fratley  _ might _ be murdered for sympathizing with him. Or with twelve babes, she could die in childbed.

He wouldn't have it. "Freya, you should be home. A white mage should be with you at all hours." Why did she fix an almost heartful look to him now?

"We have none. The nearest is in Daguerreo, unless you count yourself."

Not this.... "You can't mean it," he murmured, trying to keep his composure. "To trust not only your life but theirs to me.... What if I err, and you die?"

She shook her head. "You're an accomplished herbalist. I know that from Hilda.... You mixed a Pure right in front of her in Gulug and made her drink it." The bare threads connecting everyone he'd met to their source...hells, they were growing stronger now. Sooner or later, the good woman would seek to flee her derelict husband and come to meet him again, though whether she'd bring Eiko was another matter.

"I also keep anatomy texts." He had to give her that much. "I suppose it shouldn't be difficult to assist you...though I wish you'd been able to find someone else."

"Even were I able, I wouldn't." Freya rose and padded to his side, to sit there with him. "Tell me, Kuja. Have you ever felt a child inside its mother? Have you ever had any knowledge of life before it begins?" His hands were tied, but his head was not. Slowly she unbuckled her coat.

He shivered there. "I have not been so close a friend to you as to have such privilege, Freya Crescent."

"You've also known a narrow idea of life. You've always been an adult. When Vivi was born he was small, but not this small. These babes have never even seen the light.... I would consider it a boon for you to know of them. Suppose they do not all live? Those who died would never know of you otherwise, and how you saved our lives."

She reached for his shoulder, stroked it gently with a paw. "If you are to be present with us always, you should share in our joys." 

Slowly, with her guiding hand, he leaned in to press his ear to the swell of her belly——where a generation of children lay, who would never know of Brahne or Mist-fueled evils.

He heard no borborygmi, no movement of  _ her _ frame...but in the quiet there he felt bare shifting. Beneath his ear, against his face, a tide moved that wasn't her at all—— One of tiny arms and legs, small muzzles that would squeak for nourishment when they were freed from her womb. Had they any fur? Perhaps not yet...if Burmecians were carried for two months, they were nearly halfway there.

She'd chosen to share  _ this, _ with him. He knew of children who did not yet know his name, or how evil he had been to this world. "Th——," The knowledge pricked his eyes with grief, and wonder, "They're beautiful, Freya. Such movement. The hope...." When last he'd struggled under feelings like this, the kind he scarcely understood, Vivi had called him 'Mama'.

Where was he?

"Theirs is a potential one, Kuja. But thanks to you they were possible at all. You have my thanks for not only them, but the strength and health to reach their father and our home."

"If it weren't for me, you'd have a better one."

The Dragon Knight conceded this with a nod. "Aye, that's true. But the path to forgiveness is a difficult one for most. Your aid is not only one I need, but something you do as well.... When you learn to trust yourself, to use your abilities for more than malice, you will see what you truly are...and why Garland was wrong. You yet have hope. I believe in you."

"So...," He looked around, "You don't care? You don't think about what I did to you through my mages, polluting Brahne's soul, all of that?"

"I do think of it, Kuja, but I do not dwell on it. That is where our difference lies."

He sat in thought at this——accepting Freya's aid to sit, watching her quickly rise to vomit into the firepit. Childbearing had a weakening effect on even the hardiest of frames.... But it seemed to have sharpened her resolve. She said so much more to him now than she had in those days. 

"I will do whatever I can," he murmured, "to see what you do. It is not only Steiner saying these things to me now, though I still don't understand your thoughts. You eight must be a peculiar lot to remove yourselves from what I did, and accept me for what I was from the start. I would ask you why, but the answer would likely be as nebulous as his words were to me." 

"Nebulous? Silverlocks, we do not seek to deceive you. We are not Garland and would not do so. Yes, you were born in a kingdom of lies, but no, you needn't behave as though you're doomed to it. We are here," Fratley approached to soothe both Kuja and his own shuddering wife, "to see that you learn of life and all its joys. You had the might to summon the darkness of eternity...and now that he has released you to the light you see no hope. Do you not understand? You are here for your own delights, your own whims. It is only through seeing your steps that Necron will know when we are doomed. He  _ sees _ through you, but does not act for you. He does not forbid you any joys. If he did, Adelbert Steiner would've been the first of such."

_ «you see but you do not understand, kuja. the burden of immortality is one you are learning now...you wished for it. what more will you refuse? i command nothing but your span of days upon this planet.» _

His head hit ground. He had been listening so long he'd forgotten his balance, his strength...even his energy. Blanketed and otherwise denuded, dizzy with things he didn't quite comprehend, lifted by not only Fratley but Amarant, he shook his head.

"...Vivi. Where's Vivi?"

"Steiner is out looking for him. He insists upon keeping him safe from not only Cid, but Beatrix if she is proceeding here. The lad would be in danger if she approached him." But Fratley's face paled at the critical look in Kuja's eyes.

"He will suffer no danger that anyone can  _ physically _ cause him. Think. How did I make him to begin with? What is a Black Mage made of, where does his void-dark aura come from? Even the natural ones had one thing in common with Vivi Ornitier." He didn't want to show this much of his hand so soon, but he had to let them know.

"No one can harm him anymore. Not by her means, and certainly not Cid's. Do not underestimate the child you knew; he is nothing so weak anymore. And whether he gets to us alone or trails a few bodies behind him, he will come." Sighing, Kuja revealed, "Steiner's in more danger than Vivi is."

  
  


**‡**

  
  


"Whoa. Calm down, Bobby. You're fine."

Chocobo wrangling wasn't hard. What turned out to be was chocobo wrangling when you were two feet taller and couldn't control your body any more than you could his. The huge bird made his best efforts to keep his rider on, though both of them had been roughly the same size almost two years ago.... He cocked his head at some faraway sound.

"Something wrong, pal?" The mage lifted his own head, raising a hand to his ear. "...Someone's coming.... They sound heavy." Or a group in step. Listening close, he stopped Bobby Corwen where he was, lowered a hand to his feathery neck. "Stay still. Relax."

The high grasses parted away from him—— A cry burst from his lips.

"Steiner! Oh my god——" He patted his mount's side. "Come on, Bobby. It's Steiner——Go get him. Go get him, Bobby——" He barely managed to grab his hat, clinging to the reins as the chocobo hurtled through the meadow. "Good boy, let's go—— The rest of them are gonna be in that direction, we have to get to Kuja!"

Fast bird, slow reflexes. Bobby managed to come to a stop, but Vivi didn't.... He crashed into the knight, flailing, caught and hugged firmly in those great arms. Steiner held him there for long, silent moments...one hand stroking his hair, where his hat had gone tumbling from his head.

"Master Vivi...You have certainly grown."

He hugged there too——Steiner wasn't so very tall anymore. Maybe he had three inches on the mage.... And with what Vivi had seen, the things Necron had shown him, their lives were changing irretrievably. This was only the start.

"Missed you," he whispered. "I hope everything's okay." Beside him Bobby Corwen bit his jacket, trying to pull him backward. "Come on, buddy. Give us a minute."

"We do not have so long." Steiner frowned. "Cidolfas  _ knows _ Kuja was in Treno, and he's attempting to chase him down. I'm certain he means him death." He set Vivi on his feet, knelt to retrieve his hat. "From what I understand, Beatrix would be no challenge for either of you, and Cid would be delivered home in a casket...but the less you have to engage, the better. We can speak more on it back in the castle."

"Right." He took Bobby by the reins and led him on.

  
  
  


Nightfall was a concern they shared. Whether they traveled only by day or risked themselves to the shadows, Kuja and Vivi stood as the least imperiled and most hated of the camp.

They'd taken the watch; the others had worked so hard to help them, and Freya's pregnant self had to be guarded. Beatrix would try to repeat what she'd done to Fratley the first time.... Why, in a world of moralistic duty, did she hate as strongly as she did?

"Go to bed, Kuja," his creation murmured, staring into the fire.

He shook his head. "There are things I must ask you. You've seen what happened.... But do you  _ know?" _

"That you're Steiner's property by Alexandrian law, and he's taken you as a lover? Yeah. I'm totally aware. It's confusing, but if someone has to look after you, I'm glad it's him. He's never been one to fully forget his head."

"I feel as though  _ I _ have. I've changed so much, Vivi. I don't know what to do." He searched those golden eyes, the way almost nothing around them could be seen anymore. Midnight was a sorry time to be awake. "If you were in my place, what would you think? What would you do?"

"Right now?" His eyes hooded into weary slits.

Kuja nodded. If a child's mind could figure it out, maybe it was better for the both of them. Vivi wasn't brainless by any means.

"I'd go to bed." He cocked his head, stripping his hat back off. "Doesn't make much sense to stay awake when just one of us can do the job.... This constant parlay of yours with Necron is wearing you thin, and so are those chains."

"So you hear him too."

Vivi shrugged. "There's been a lot of things I've heard since I was born. Not all of them were physically traceable. The way manamortam wanders, how it sometimes carries voices in it.... Or maybe that was just the Mist in my veins."

"You've begun to scare me."

"Death isn't deaf, Kuja...nor is it mute. With what you had to do in Evil Forest those years ago, if Beatrix or Cid come after me, they'd have to be stronger than you to even wound me. And it's gonna take more than a cuckolder and a disgraced general to buckle me. Now go to bed. You're still feverish from that seed."

Shivering, the Genome rose to his feet—— Necron had tapped the golem closer than he had Kuja. That might be worse than wondering whose magic would end the planet, whose hands would wield that reaping scythe.

"Goodnight." Gloved hands poured another cup of coffee. "Get some sleep."

  
  


**‡**

  
  


The return was simpler than the departure, thankfully. People had grown tired of seeing the Genome.

They barely glanced his way at the guarded approach, looked to Steiner with either a new respect or rising fear...for who could command someone like Kuja without being deadlier than he was? Citizens passed, allowed him through, missing the furtively lustful gaze the mage aimed now and then at his turn. The newly appointed General of Alexandria led his charge on, ushered him to the doorway...and pivoted to mark the few stragglers with a look of disapproval.

"Go home," Garnet ordered gently behind them. "It's not so very interesting anymore." Though that couldn't be further from the truth; Kuja had made himself an entirely new element in Steiner's life.

His hand smoothed over that soft, silken shoulder as the doors closed. Better the people never learned, or only did when Kuja's sentence was lifted from him...whenever or however that happened to occur. Beside him the mage's warmth was an understated, rare loveliness.

"I will have to bathe him in my chambers from now on," he murmured to Garnet, hoping she would understand.

She nodded. "It will be better that way..., especially with what Zidane told me. I admit I am surprised."

"W-well, I...." To his horror, his face heated. She reached for his arm and turned him there.

"I do not mind. It is between you and Kuja, and whoever asks me for information will have to respect such. The loom is in your chambers waiting; I will have a washtub brought up for you. All I ask——," Garnet weakly smiled, "is that you continue to care for him in ways no other could. I have never seen him so healthy or lively...I wish it to continue."

"As it shall." He bowed; Kuja did too. "I should get him upstairs before anything happens.... After all, someone  _ did _ inform Cid of his whereabouts."

"Do so." Her gentle nod was enough to tell of loyalty.


	14. XIV

They heard nothing at all from Beatrix or Cid for some time.

Garnet and Zidane spent their days in the gardens; though they'd made no changes to the epitaph, every now and then a wreath of flowers would be laid on the statue's head, or a rose would find its way into its folded hand.... Occasionally, even some small token, which though Kuja was yet living would be delivered to the chamber he shared with Steiner.

It was not until one fall afternoon, when the days were warm and the nights sweet and cool, did the Queen of Alexandria truly understand how deeply Beatrix hated him.

She sat holding tea with Zidane, Vivi and Amarant; the latter two sat relaxing on a bench in the rear of the garden, speaking low about something, while she sat looking at Zidane with a soft frown on her face.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know," she whispered, "I just feel terrible for Kuja. Something tells me he isn't out of danger yet." The garden wasn't so loud as to hide the sounds of footsteps, two sets furtively creeping behind the hedge wall to the fountain.... "Shh. Listen!"

Zidane cocked a gloved hand aside his ear. "...You're right. Someone's sneaking around...." Slowly he rose to his feet.

Vivi looked up where he sat drinking tea. Amarant murmured something into his ear——he shook his head, turning back to what had to be  _ fortified _ tea by now. Garnet lifted herself from her seat beside the Genome.

"If they're here for Kuja, they're going to have to be stronger than us." He followed the sound, hand instinctively reaching for the dagger at his belt. "Stay back here with Vivi and Amarant."

"But Zidane——"

"I'm serious!" He lifted a finger to his lips. "Stay back. I'll take care of things here." Though with the former General being stronger than any of them but Kuja....

She had to reason with Beatrix. It was certainly possible to do so with Cid...another route to the fountain existed, a tiny path between the hedge and the garden wall. Passing by Amarant, nodding barely to Vivi, she pondered how the two of them seemed to be in their own world there.

The leaves barely rustled around her. Looking through the hedge wherever she could find a space, she saw no sign of Beatrix  _ or _ Cid, only Zidane sneaking through the other way. And the fountain wall was just ahead——

"...Oh my...." She didn't know what to think. As she realized what the sounds beneath the spraying water were, she waved him over. "It's not either of them. I don't even think they're in Alexandria right now...."

"Then who's there?" Her shaking head didn't deter him; he grabbed for the wall, lifted himself on his elbows to look. "...Well, damn."

"I can't believe it. What do we do?"

He turned, brows wriggling. "I dunno, I mean, we could watch." Offering his hand, he motioned to the other side. "Come on. You've wondered whether he was happy here. I kinda think you should see it with your own eyes...."

"But would they be angry?" she wondered, before slowly accepting his aid. 

Zidane shook his head where he leaned. "Look at that, Dagger. I've never even seen Kuja smile like that——And Rusty? Forget about it."

She found herself warming there...he had a point. Before their eyes, a knight and a mage lost their senses to find one another.... Steiner's hold a secure one, gentle, the surrender in those pale blue eyes a natural kind. She hadn't enslaved him after all...or she had, and the former captain's love had freed him. Nothing could be evil in this light, none of the flaws she remembered were even here. Kuja moaned, gasped, even laughed in that bliss, unbelievably content where they loved.

"...I wonder if that hurts," she thought aloud; beside her, the younger Genome shrugged. Who knew? Whether it did or didn't, the two found everything they wanted on the edge of that fountain, the spray cooling their bared chests.

Kuja rose to sit upright in Steiner's arms—— A sudden sense of wariness had come over him. Had he noticed Garnet?

"...Move aside, Your Majesty."

She turned; Beatrix! The older woman stood there stone-faced...on the other end of the garden, was that skulking figure Cid?

"Beatrix, it is not what it seems." Poor liar she made. That eye narrowed to her presence——beside her Zidane slipped over the wall, grabbing for Garnet's wrist.

"Dagger, come on——"

They ran. She hurtled behind him into the midst of the statuaries; Cid crossed her path but did not stop. He barely glanced in her direction, drawing his sword.

"Adelbert Steiner, release him. Back away."

The two stared at their intruders——Finally Kuja saw Garnet. He barely shook his head. 'Get out of here,' he might've mouthed; in either case, Beatrix stormed over the path, seized him by the shoulders and threw him aside.

"You libertine!  _ Sodomite! _ What you do with my husband——"

"Beatrix, he is not married to you any longer! Do you recall what you said to me in my chambers? What I released you from?!" She might be rushing into her own death with what she did now, making for the two where Kuja lay on the cobblestones. "And what he does with someone else is not your business—— Especially with what you've done to Aunt Hilda! How long has this occurred? Did you have Uncle Cid's company before you left Steiner?"

"That is not your concern, Garnet." She forgot her protocol, and even her manners. One boot stepped cruelly on Kuja's hand, attempting upon the fingers. "How did his chain break? Why is there a  _ crack _ in that collar? Are you attempting to free him?!"

"I knew I should've taken everything this boy holds precious!" Behind Beatrix, Cid grabbed for the Genome's tail, crushing his other hand. "If that metal will weaken, I'll see his head leave his shoulders——I have been too patient with him. Hilda left last night, Garnet, and she took Eiko!"

"Lani, Beatrix—— Whom else will you defile your bed with? You are not a cuckold but a cuckolder, Cidolfas Fabool. Amarant intended to marry Lani and I am  _ certain _ Steiner was still married to Beatrix when you first invited her to stay." Why, why did Kuja speak now? Could they hear that low tone? "You are the very monster you believe me to be. And if I knew where your wife was, I would  _ hide _ her from you."

"Not another word," Beatrix snarled. Beneath her boot heel several of his bones broke...Only the look in his eyes kept Steiner from moving. His face purpled in fury.

'Get Her Majesty out of here, Steiner. Neither of them should see this.' He barely managed to mouth this through the peril. The Queen shook her head, teary-eyed; she wouldn't leave the Genome to this torture. She couldn't!

"Hey."

One little word, the smallest of interjections, cut the garden into silence. Not even faraway doves gave a coo. 

"Stay out of this." Cid found his voice first, crossing before Kuja and Beatrix, rapier drawn in his fist. "You, the little bastard who let all the others in.... I want nothing from you, Vivi Ornitier, except your destruction as soon as Kuja is dead. I will dismantle you myself!"

"Sure." The Black Mage shrugged. "Go ahead. My life's meaningless, Regent Cid. I've never been a person. I don't exist. You'd be doing me a favor...." His own steps advanced past Garnet and Zidane. "Steiner."

"Master Vivi?"

"Get them out of here. They don't need to see this.... He's gonna help me get out of this wretched plane. We don't live like people do, Regent...not when we've made a pact with Chaos itself. Black magic isn't exactly for rubes. We have to pass a test...," His eyes searched Beatrix's where she stood glowering, "and it needs a certain ingredient to do so."

He tossed his hat. Her eye widened.

"You see...," Truly faceless, he advanced not on Cid, but Beatrix. "He didn't misspeak those years ago. He needed that  _ final ingredient _ to make the mages.... Most of it was used on me."

Her face bleached of all its color. Slowly she raised her boot from Kuja's hand, backed barely away. "Y—You cannot mean it. Regent——"

"Cid, kill me." He swiveled his head on his blue-collared neck. "Kill me. Do it. For Lindblum and how much of it was destroyed by the others. They were my friends.... When they died, I helped bury them. I loved them from the first day, when they protected me on the cargo ship. I was a Black Mage doll the entire time."

Where Beatrix had paled, Cid had reddened. He stood trembling on his feet. 

"You utter abomination. I knew it was the worst of ideas to allow you into the castle. I knew when you won the  _ Festival of the Hunt _ you weren't some little brat. Who allows a nine-year-old to compete?"

"Cid, don't——"

"I'm not even nine years old," Vivi murmured, unlacing his jacket. He threw it aside——the short, slightly overweight frame he'd had was now a gangly one. The void he made in the garden seemed to suck every particle of light it could away. "Try  _ three,  _ almost four."

Dew shone on the statue nearest Garnet. She touched it...frost? But he'd only ever excelled with fire.... That didn't explain the chilly marble. He looked down at Kuja, then behind him.

"All of them, Steiner, get them out of here."

The burly General moved to comply. Seizing Kuja up by the arms——careful of his hands——he passed between his former wife and her lover, shooing Garnet and Zidane back with him. The older Genome wore an injured starkness to his eyes, but said nothing now.

Amarant approached to stand in their way, arms on either end of the entry. "...Not happening. If you watch, you're doin' it from back here." Though he shot Kuja a sympathetic look, shaking his head.

"You big ape." Zidane had enough presence of mind to stand where he was. "Is he gonna be all right?"

"I dunno, monkey. Leave 'im alone."

"What are you waiting for?" Vivi's cry brought them back to the forefront. "You want revenge for your kingdom, Cid, go ahead and take it. Beatrix, you could take it for losing Steiner. Either of you can make all my dreams come true with one...little...stab."

"Go back to the hell you were spawned in!" Hilda's derelict husband lunged forward. The blade shoved right through——reemerging in Vivi's lower back, a lance of agony.

_"Master Vivi!_ _ Nooo o——" _ Steiner crashed into Amarant's hold, one blue-white hand easily holding him by the face. "Get away from me, you——Don't just let them——"

"...What the  _ fuck _ is that?"

Zidane's query couldn't describe the dissonance well at all. Creeping frost threaded through the garden..., freezing the fountain in its spray, the water mid-ripple, flowers upright and stiff. Beatrix stumbled backward to the stones, hand held over her mouth. 

To all appearances, Vivi hadn't been harmed, but as he turned, Garnet saw who  _ had _ . Cid's weapon didn't even shift in his rail-thin form; it couldn't, gripped in a frozen white hand. Whatever eldritch air had gone through the mage stopped there, in the regent's rimey, open-mouthed face.

"You knew," Zidane accused, able to sputter only this. "Beatrix, you _knew!_ Why'd you even come back?!"

"For Kuja! That monster deserves none of your pity! And now I consider myself possessed of  _ two _ enemies——Vivi Ornitier, from this day you are marked! One day your blood will be on my hands!" She fixed a stare that could melt iron past Amarant, to Garnet herself. "You have not seen the depths of my rage,  _ Sarah. _ I am no friend to Alexandria if it will harbor criminals such as these! Find yourself the strength to cast them off, or I will do it for you." Too quickly for the sights here, she retreated.

Headed for other grounds, no doubt, the kind that would leave everyone in danger. This evening no one would sleep...not until the catacombs beneath the castle were shut tight, every  _ alcove _ blocked from her malice.

Cid's hand loosened from his glove. The former regent crashed stiffly to the ground...above him, the golem shook his head.

"If you leave him intact, you'll have bigger problems tomorrow."


	15. XV

She arrived that evening, Eiko in tow; the others excused themselves to the drawing room while Garnet and Zidane met her in the great hall. 

Unsure of whether to tell Hilda anything themselves, Steiner and Kuja deferred. And neither of them could meet eyes with Vivi now, who seemed impressively bored with the entire thing...and had properly (or otherwise) disposed of Cid. The bottled ash among his clothing would simply have to be given to the regent's wife, to be buried or rejected later.

The two had not come alone——Artania had accompanied them, a gentle frown on his face now as he looked after the little summoner. Steiner caught a glance through the window; beside him, Kuja shook his head.

"...If he'd struck my collar with his foot, I might've lost it." Nestling up to the General's bicep, he managed further, "They really did manage to ruin my hands. I don't know that I'll ever be able to hold a thing again."

"It won't matter." Their silent savior finally spoke. "Kuja, you get to hear what he says. He'll see through your eyes when everything is to end, because your emotions are the most unwieldy. Your soul would be the fairest judge; you've done so much evil before this that the scales are already tipped. He chose right."

"So the scythe——"

"The world-ending power," Vivi turned to look at him, "isn't in your body. It's something you couldn't handle. You loved Gaia from the moment you stepped onto it. I was reborn on Gaia and didn't have your impetus. All I knew was here. I don't remember my life on Terra at all."

"Garland murdered you days after he found you, not even a month after your birth. You wouldn't be able to."

"So what would you be able to offer except your own love? You defied Garland to save Gaia. You can't do that again——when Necron sees this place is evil enough, he's going to use my living force to break this plane. The only way he mastered you is by giving you a piece of himself. You and I both have a particle of Necron inside us."

No one spoke. This, indeed, was information none of them had wanted to know.

"And it doesn't matter anyway. I love this place as much as you do, even from the sadness and evils I've already seen. But with how the planet already treated me, I'm tipped in the other direction...he didn't  _ want _ that. My pain makes me the better element. Your fear and need to exist, your burning hunger for love, are the perfect mirror. And together," He shook his head, "we are the alchemy that ends worlds."

"You're also the dearest creature I've come to know, Vivi." In the doorway, that longsuffering lady had finally made her appearance. "I knew he had Lani, but I wasn't aware Beatrix herself was willing to shame me."

"Holy hell, you got huge." Eiko peered past Hilda's skirts at the mage. "I mean, geez. At least people will know you aren't one of the kids anymore."

"I wasn't even moving when they came to Alexandria."

"Yeah, but they're what, a couple of inches shorter than you were? Your weird friend Puck thought they were all just more of you." She didn't touch him as he rose to his feet, Cid's last effects on the table in front of him. "...So this is what's left of him."

"Yeah. You can't leave a lich's victim whole. They use the bones as support and absolutely wreck everything in their path."

"So why are  _ you _ a lich, Vivi, while the others aren't?" Hilda's question brought up a good point. "The other dolls couldn't be affected by a living element if they weren't alive. And the lads don't seem to be changed in any way.... But this happened when a  _ living _ Black Mage had children. It doesn't happen when a golem copies itself."

He reached for the bottle, handed it to her. She didn't seem to want it any more than he did. "...Hilda, I wasn't originally a golem. Kuja actually copied  _ himself, _ in a form of cloning only the second stage of Genome can do asexually. It's a bit like mitosis...or budding. When Garland drowned him, he must have changed somehow.... That change brought on the limited immortality of a Genome itself. Typically they'll clone and their previous form will die."

"Kuja didn't...he simply cloned and remained alive." She looked past him to the Genome, where he sat in Steiner's arms with broken fingers and further ruined hands. "It makes enough sense for me.... I'm only sorry Beatrix swore a vendetta against you."

"I don't care." His voice flattened. "He was willing to try to kill me, and she stood there cowering when he did. Like I told Amarant, I wouldn't kill her. I didn't even touch her, didn't have to. She knows exactly what will happen if she makes the effort to end me."

"One thing, though." Eiko might've hinged on something else. "Fire doesn't kill you, Cure doesn't hurt you, and Phoenix Downs only helped you."

"I'm not fully undead. He synthesized me with Lich's Heart, but brought me back to life. Didn't last long...once it ended, this one started. And even with the limits undead  _ do _ have, Necron's not gonna let me die. He brought me back with a piece of his soul."

"Talk about grisly." She might understand now. Running past him to the Genome, she grabbed for those long hands and murmured...trying to help Kuja in the small ways she could. "They really hurt you, huh?"

He nodded. "So did all of you, and I deserved it. Neither of them had any reason to love me...no one but you benefitted from my presence. And even then it wasn't by much."

"Aw, stuff it." But she might be feeling better now. He thanked Necron for that one——though the consequences of what Vivi had done would doubtlessly be far-reaching. She didn't even give the table a look as she clambered into Kuja's lap, sitting there until he quietly cleared his throat.

"Yeah?"

He slowly indicated his tail. "I'm not in the best of moods over my near death, and my body's a bit worse for wear. I'm going to have to adjourn to our chambers for a bath...I need you to get up."

"I heard what you two were doing when he found you." But she took pity on him, those twinkling eyes told him she didn't care about a bit of it. Carefully she moved from the chair and back onto her feet.

If he hadn't nearly died from two unwelcome visitors, he thought he might of embarrassment. Eiko being privy to the whole affair felt wrong, somehow..., especially with the look she gave him now. "I'm old enough to be your father," he chided. "Don't tell me you've developed  _ another _ infatuation."

"Hey, it's not my fault." She scampered away.

"Yeah, I think I'm gonna figure out what to do myself," Vivi murmured. "I feel kinda cold. There a tub around here that wouldn't freeze and break if I sat in it?"

Kuja turned to look at Steiner, who nodded. "It  _ is _ cleaned, right?"

"It wasn't ruined to begin with, lad, but yes. It should be quite fine for our young friend's need.... In the guard room, Vivi. The enormous stone one...there's a fireplace and a cauldron as well, to heat the water." But he blinked; Amarant appeared to be leaving with him. "And just where are you going?"

"Gotta make sure the catacombs don't get invaded. Brahne's chamber is all locked up, but who knows how many tunnels are in the guard room? Vivi and I are gonna take the watch...he's had a pretty busy day already. And if he catches some shut-eye, he'll need a relief. All of you go sleep. We can handle it."

"I hope he's right," Hilda said worriedly behind them.

  
  


-

  
  


"I think what bothers me the most," He turned to look at the fireplace, where the monk stood solemn in front of it, "was that he lost his brains enough to hit me. I'd've thought Beatrix would tell him about me long before today. I thought he knew I was a doll."

Amarant shrugged. "Whatever you are, you're not a little kid anymore."

"At least there's that."

"I'm not entirely sure what kind of advice you're looking for, Vivi. I don't think I have any sutras for your situation." He barely turned, to the sound of water flash-heated to near boiling. "Anything specific you're looking for? Or just an ear to vent to?"

"Doesn't really bother me either way to have you here. I guess the way things were just changed so much, I can't think. I know exactly what I have to do and I  _ don't _ exactly like it. Kuja found something to take the edge off...But what he said bothered me. You were gonna marry Lani, right?"

"Yeah, until I found out she was fucking Cid. I don't bother with anyone who won't treat me like I'm exclusive. I dunno, it seems like what they have is a pretty good thing...For once, Kuja seems like he's at peace. He's coming to terms with the idea of being loved. Kinda cute when you think about it." He knelt, slid a hand into the water. "If you like it hot, you're about to lose all your troubles. You could almost boil a goose in this tub."

"Maybe I liked fire so much because of how cold I always felt. But I don't know if that explains the hypothermia I got in the Ice Cavern." Vivi stripped out of his jacket, his gloves, his boots, and sat fiddling with his belt——trying to make sense of what he'd seen the few minutes he'd closed his eyes in their little camp. It had to be wrong, right? Why would any of that make sense?

_ «kuja is learning his limits...so too must you.» _

_ Oh. I guess I should thank you for that...I mean, earlier. I dunno if you meant that to happen, but.... _ He shook his head.  _ Am I meant to find calm in a sense I never expected to? I mean, maturity, like this? _

_ «what is meant to be will occur, child. you need not thank me for what dwelled inside you from the start.» _

_ If I'd known about it, I think things would've gone a little differently _ . He'd have to resign himself to a will stronger than his, then. The idea didn't kill him; if Kuja could do it, so could he. Belt and trousers dropped to the floor.

Amarant barely glanced as Vivi slid into the tub, sighing. Definitely hot enough. But he still felt too tall...how did he not get nosebleeds? The faceless curve he'd had before showed a bit of form now.

"Puberty. It's a trip, isn't it?"

"Yeah." The monk's heartbeat was audible at this point. "You're six-foot-nothin' and skinnier than Zidane now. I could break a tree as thin as you in half over my knee." Lowering himself into a crouch beside the tub, he softly laughed. "Could be worse. You went from nondescript to kinda cute."

"Oh, bullshit. I don't even have a face." Right now, hours off his first weird murder——regicide by stupidity, really——and a stomach full of fortified tea, the sobriety had returned but he'd kept his confusion. Adulthood was an absolute mess.

"You don't need to worry about freezin' anymore, kid. I'll look after you."

Kinda comforting, those huge arms around his shoulders. He had to admit that one. "So...I dunno what to do with myself, Amarant. I mean, I just killed Regent Cid. Or he killed himself. But I'm confused about the whole thing...I hear Necron as much as Kuja does. Every now and again, when I go to sleep for the few hours I can get, I see things I don't understand. Like, the future, or something? I don't get it...but I saw what was going on with Kuja before I even left my hut. I saw Beatrix's retreat, but I didn't see Cid's death. And I looked inward two nights ago, and I saw something else.... I know it's gonna happen, but I don't know how to go about it."

"What'd you see?" Crimson brows raised.

"I guess...," The mage shook his head, drawing closer, "this." His hands wound around Amarant's thick neck, pulling him half into the tub.

One hand skated through his pale, feathery hair——so much like Kuja's, but for the length. "Two nights ago...And you didn't say a word." Soaked leather vest slowly stripped away under thin black fingers. Every sound they made bounced off the walls, from the subtle movement of the bath water to the older man’s breaths...the crackle of the fire nearby, Vivi's soft, nervous panting, rippling banners outside the gate.

"Didn't think I should've. It seemed like something that wouldn't help...."

"Bullshit. Takin' your mind off the clusterfuck that's become your life can only help you in the long run.... How long do you have anyway? Depending on how far Gaia falls, how fast, you could be dead in three years or three thousand. Leaving yourself to misery will only make the end come quicker." He had a point where he leaned over that stone tub.... Vivi moved slowly back to make more room, unable to look away. 

Sutras might not help, but this, a force physically stronger than he'd ever been.... That'd do it. A quiet understanding crept over his mind, of those feelings in the strange void dreams turned out to be. Kuja and Steiner had come to that knowledge over a month ago..., while the creature they'd both guided wondered how it'd been so long for him. Three years, the twenty more his natural body had known—— In some strange way, it comforted him to know he was not so fragile anymore.

"All I ever knew was destruction. I've only been able to hurt people...not really help them. I guess that was why Necron chose me."

"Eh." One huge hand swatted the air. "You can know your power without resigning yourself to it, kid. I know I could break anyone's neck without trying. Do I?" Mostly, no. Amarant only harmed people when he had to...other than that, he  _ lived. _ He drank, he smoked, he worked on his physical attributes—— Even took time to mend his clothes, polish whatever weapons he carried, meditate.... He  _ knew _ he could kill someone, but he hardly ever did.

Vivi hadn't really had the time to explore his own thoughts. He enjoyed plays, certainly...delicious food, cooled tea on a hot day, the weirdly addictive taste of kupo nuts.... Mended his own outfits, preened Bobby Corwen when he could, grew plants. But as for the idea of being stuck in his own head, or exploring himself as something with a soul....

He had no reference, barely knew his sense of self to begin with. What was  _ he _ made of, he wondered, that made him any different from Zidane or Steiner? How did he differ from anyone else, either?

"Takes some time to know yourself, but when you do it's all worth it. You don't have to just destroy things, Vivi. You can be a destructive force out there..., and maybe a calm one in here. Hell, you could be gentle like Steiner——or loving in that odd way Kuja turned out to be. What do you  _ want _ to be, kid? Because until the switch cuts out and the crystal breaks, you get to figure it out."

"I...." He didn't even know. Choosing his future seemed as far-flung from him as attempting to learn white magic. Some element he couldn't see waited just beyond him, to give a sense of peace——of love, perhaps——while he lingered in his final role.... Maybe it was here with Amarant...in the way he leaned back, brushed his dreadlocks over his shoulders to look into Vivi's eyes.

"For having no face, kiddo, you  _ do _ have a lot of personality."

Always managing to disarm his worries. Steiner might be protecting Kuja from his own, giving solace to his fear or credence to his words. He'd never really had anyone to  _ listen _ before, to really hear his thoughts...and he'd had many.

Vivi had plenty of solace, but his thoughts flew like dust over a desert. Too many, too fast, too hard...and when they buried him, he had to spend a great deal of time in silence while he dug himself out. Calm, rest.... Some of that for a while.

Quietly he edged up to his far taller friend, moved those legs to either side of him. Amarant said nothing, only slid an arm around his back...the storm he'd seen today might well be weathered here, in a warm, dark room where neither of them would be judged. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to feel, to bury himself to thick, hard muscle and trust his trembling form to that strength. Beneath his ear, the monk's heart held its pace...no panic there, no sign of the anguish that came with power.

Maybe  _ true _ power wasn't how deadly someone was.

He'd never been so confused in his life. Black magic had been the first thing he'd known, the last——all had been ruin beneath his small hands, and now another had ruined themselves without them. Such a fire couldn't ever be holy or good, not without the intent. But he so hated the stench of ashes, the screaming he still heard from Lindblum, Burmecia, Cleyra.... Too much, too deadly the might, in too many hands. And now the end of everything was held in the frame of someone who didn't even want it.

But dwelling on those moments would only lead him to ill. Here, no screams, no fire.... No one dying too early at the hands of someone born too late. No pain in this room but that of his own fears.... A strange march, some eerie impetus, had brought the two of them back, and only Kuja seemed to have accepted his fate.

"I'm gonna lose my life if I keep trying to run from it," Vivi whispered. "It was all I did before...I didn't want to fight, but I wasn't given a choice.... And now that I  _ do _ have one, I'm just sitting here mumbling like a fool." Softly stroking fingers, through his hair..., other arm wrapped closely enough around him to keep him upright. No chains, no collar. But he felt nearly as trapped as Kuja was, mired in his own worries.

Rough-edged lips touched his forehead. "Kid, you've never been a fool. Me, however...." He sagged there under the reedy mage. "I dunno. I guess I was askin' for trouble when I got involved with Lani. She's always been power-hungry...wanted notoriety as a bounty hunter. Remember when she almost took Eiko? We had another assignment——I probably shouldn't tell you about it, but Brahne wanted us to  _ kill _ you."

Made him wonder, just hearing that. Maybe Amarant had stayed for a guilty conscience and found his own purpose with Zidane and the others. He himself had been orphaned and wandered into Alexandria to see a play...Funny how things worked. Eight people had come together, totally by accident, and found out about the existence of a ninth who'd pretty much had them all in the palm of his hand.

"I was involved before I knew I was involved." He sighed. "Seems to be how it goes these days. And you worked in Treno, Zidane got you fired.... You ran into Kuja more than once, didn’t you?"

"Yeah. Funny that."

Vivi turned around, reached for a fresh-cut cake of soap he'd found on the shelves. "Kind of a nice night.... Reminds me of when things were quiet in the Black Mage Village, before everyone died. I hope all the ether in the ground does something."

"Kuja mentioned a manamortam cycle. Replacing the Mist with ether should pick up at least one of 'em." He pulled his dreadlocks back, watched void-dark hands scrub lather from the soap. "Whaddya doin'?"

"I dunno. Figure if I'm gonna be in here, I might as well wash up." He rubbed the cake through his hair, lowered his head to work it clean——one large hand pressed to his chest. Holding him still, maybe.... Good idea with how much he tripped. His heart was doing a bit of that right now; Amarant's hands were big enough to crush his ribcage.  _ Ah, but if he'd intended to kill me, that would've happened when I was small and largely helpless. _

"Kinda smells good." Breaths fell on his neck. "You're not bad company, y'know.... A bit quieter than most, but it could be worse."

Vivi looked up——that was some grin caught over his chinstrap beard. Lani'd had more than one reason to hang around as long as she did.... He set aside the soap, knelt on the monk's lap to watch those eyes. "Might get worse later," he whispered, knowing it almost certainly would. Everything on the planet, and even Gaia itself, hinged on the scales being tipped to good at every point.

His thoughts clouded away, disappearing into the wake of his heartbeat, the way it pounded in his ears.  _ Hot water. Crackling fire over there. Amarant's hand behind your back.... Footsteps? _

"...Someone's in here."

He nodded—— Smashed into hard muscle, barely a flicker of effort. Pale arms closed tightly around him...hiding him from the quiet approach, one that stopped still. Beatrix's steps weren't typically so quiet, and she wore boots. Whoever padded through this place had no shoes to speak of.... But something clicked mutely on the stone floor.

Claws. And quieter footfalls than Beatrix could only have been her opponent. The Dragon Knight appeared slowly in the torches, blinking; he mightn't have expected anyone else here.

"Young Master Vivi...And Salamander. Looks like I won't be alone this evening." He gave them a blithe-looking grin, seeming to either know or suspect what they had been doing. "I'll take the watch deeper into the castle.... Not a thing could get past the two of you here."

"What brought you down here with us?"

"Are you daft, lad? I have a pregnant wife, and the Butcher of Burmecia is running free. Where I'd thought she merely hated Kuja, it seems she's vowed to kill you too. And with everything you did for my countrymen, as futile as that struggle was...." Stripping off his hat, Fratley confessed, "I was not even there to see the deaths of those I swore to protect. Beatrix struck not only me but my kingdom into ruin."

"If she thought about it, Iron-Tail, she'd realize you're morally her better. She knows you'd never let yourself be drawn into a meaningless war." Amarant had a point. Fratley didn't seem to be half as bloodthirsty as Beatrix...and even now he denied Vivi's culpability within the confines of that war.

He'd been a child soldier, and the only reason they'd been friends with him at all was he  _ fell off a fucking airship. _ He'd've probably led the Black Mage army if he'd made it to Alexandria.

"How different things look from the other side, eh?" The knight might know how he felt. "Lad, even Kuja has his struggles now. But to destroy a repentant man is the act of a criminal. It is truly murder...I cannot allow Beatrix her victory."

"She wouldn't win in any case. Necron won't let her."

"A reassuring idea indeed...I knew him, lad, before he created you as we came to know you. He and I participated in the Festival of the Hunt together. And to hear that  _ you  _ won the Master Hunter trophy in 1799 is simply incredible.... You barely stood four feet tall, aye?"

"Not even that. Just shy of it." He and Sir Fratley shared the same renown, though the idea he'd actually won.... How  _ had  _ Vivi managed to win?

"You're an incredible lad...it isn't difficult to see Kuja's skill."

That had to be it. It certainly couldn't be the fact that the wildly powerful Genome had cloned himself into something that Necron found acceptable to control from the inside before Vivi had even been aware of it. No longer a child, or even as helpless as he'd been, he watched the two men with growing uncertainty.... They trusted him, but right now he didn't even trust himself. What a clusterfuck.

"I should be thankful we've reduced our enemies by one, at any rate. Freya's within a day or two of childbed." Uneasy and with much the reason to be, Fratley looked away down the hall. "I'm off to guard the catacombs...I wish you all the safety you can muster, Vivi, because unless Beatrix is dispatched, we will all of us have something dire to worry about."

The Black Mage soberly nodded. "At least Steiner and Kuja are safe tonight."


	16. XVI

Settle down. Stop the furious beating of his heart, the rage within him at the knowledge Kuja might never be the same again. Vivi certainly wouldn't; the lad had managed to murder Cid without even touching his frame. And were he a man of lesser constitution, even Steiner might not still be in Alexandria.... He feared and admired the way his young friend had grown, and handled the matter of his heightsome ward with even more emotion.

Kuja sat upright by the window, hands in his lap, gathered as best they could be to each other. The basque sat by waiting——what a cruel form of irony that he might never be able to use it.

Now with Cid gone, Lindblum would likely have to pardon the Genome. His might and Vivi's would suffer no further dominance over them...that much was clear. Steiner sighed and thought better of approaching his lover at the moment; might not help either of them with how jealous Beatrix had been in the end.

"...All because of me, Adelbert, they're suffering...."

He shook his head. "If you believe that to be true, Kuja, you lack the critical thought you survived by in those tumultuous months of 1800. I will not have you believe you're the fault in this.... Evil men will do evil things. But it is not for a good man to take responsibility for them. Beatrix and Cid have both acted apart from the judgement upon you and that is their burden."

Kuja sighed, turning to look back at the General of Alexandria. The softness in those mournful blue eyes spoke of need, of a longing for comfort on even this most dire of nights. Aching, Steiner made for him——knelt to hold him close, to stroke his hair as crystalline tears flowed. He'd seen the greatest of his pains approach and pass in an eyeblink.... And now with ruined hands and feral heart, he sat looking out the window as though his death stood waiting behind it.

"I will not let harm come to you again, lad.... The fault is mine that it did."

"No...." He turned away from the window at last, nestled his head into the chest so much wider than his. "It's not for a good man to take responsibility for. You didn't crush my hands...you only held them, kissed them.... Loved them as you did your own. Their evils are not yours."

"I love  _ you, _ Kuja, as I have loved no one else on this earth. Always you will fill my dreams with peace." Slowly he kissed the crown of the mage's head. "Pray come to bed and sleep. You will need rest if you are to heal."

"Heal these?" His fingers trembled with weakness. "I will never hold a staff again, I could not synthesize even a lady's handkerchief now. Everything I held as strength was confined within these hands.... Were I able to even hold you with them, Steiner, I would not be so saddened."

Much reason to be, the knight reflected. But he would hold Kuja twice as long, twice as often, for what the Genome could no longer do. "My lad. My handsome, reflective,  _ good _ lad.... Come here, to bed...I will see you heal in heart if not in your hands."

"What will become of my sentence?" He was not the only one who wondered.

Steiner shook his head, hoping the better of outcomes but dreading the reality. "You said the calm and happiness we had would not last, that Necron had shown you it wouldn't. Perhaps this was what he meant. The collar and chains are breaking down...the quiet has already collapsed in the weight of jealousy and evil intentions. But as long as we are alive, you will not lose me, and you cannot flee from my love. I am for you alone until the day I cease to breathe."

"So you would leave with me if Garnet freed me from my bonds."

"Where would you go?"

"Ipsen's Castle would always be the safest place," Kuja whispered. "The entrance to my final sanctum cannot be seen by mortal eyes. Beatrix could never enter, though she might see it from outside the battlements. When I am pardoned, if I am, come away with me.... Do not stay here where you could be harmed or hated for the rest of your days. They would know your allegiance lay away from Alexandria. The kingdom certainly knows of it by now."

"I don't care what they know," Steiner said quietly there. Lightning clashed outside; the sky had begun to pour its grief even as Kuja's had streamed down his cheeks. "I will not suffer you to be unhappy. Not any longer, and not like this. If Garnet will not free you I will steal you away."

"She said I belong to you," came the gentle whisper. "If you left I suppose she would have no recourse."

"I am surprised she has not told me to do so."

Who would be the General then, he wondered, if he took Kuja away to Ipsen's Castle and left his homeland forever? Fratley had Burmecia to safeguard, as did Freya.... Vivi was loyal to his own village, would eventually return to it......even Quina Quen was no such option. Steiner would leave his country crippled as never before with his absence, Beatrix had already declared her sedition against the gracious ruler Garnet had become. Regent Cid was dead.

Perhaps this evening was meant for other things than worries. Zidane would hardly be a replacement for either of them, but with his determination anything could occur. And his older brother settled into bed, waited for Steiner and his approach, the gentle way he would soothe his lad as he'd done in Conde Petie.

Steiner stripped himself from his tunic and breeches, crossed the floor to their pallet bed——acutely aware of how Kuja's eyes shone in welcome, the flush to his cheeks. Slowly the fragile man licked his lips, ghostly-pale lashes hooding low.

"You watch me as though your desire shall never end, my lad. Tell me how I may comfort you."

"Love me," Kuja breathed, "give me equal pleasure to my agonies.... Exceed what we had started when they found us. You belong with me, inside me...." How sweetly he submitted there, leaned back...What Garnet had seen as chattel slavery had concealed the truth of itself, the safety and solace Steiner tried to become for him. "It was not your fault. You couldn't have stopped it...."

"I wish that weren't true. Had I the opportunity again, I would behead the woman who had once been my wife, only for your sake and safety."

"Don't grieve yourself so much. I love you."

The flutter of his lashes, the gleam of his lips. The way his silken frame parted bedding and softness to splay in urgent welcome. Drawing close, at the end of the bed, Steiner knelt——pressed his lips to the toes of first one foot, then the other. The Genome moaned at his touch...muscles stilled, calf surrendered loosely to a gentle lift. Savoring the sweetness of his mana-dewy skin, Steiner kissed his way up Kuja's foot to his shin, rubbed his cheek to the soft form below it. Though he'd fought wildly during the Mist War, like an animal, his muscles were still the thin and underdeveloped sort for his age.... The tree could not account for all of this loss. Kuja still lay tender and vulnerable beneath him, could still be wounded beyond recovery if Beatrix broke in.

Never. He would permit no more injury to his lad. Struggling the thought away from him, he kissed his way to the other shin, lifted the mage's legs over his shoulders. Above the very heart of Garland's wayward son he watched those eyes, the way they softened from the fear of the gardens to simmering need within them. Tonight they would forget what she had done, Steiner would do his best to take the terror from his leman's heart.

"You're so warm," Kuja whispered.

"All of it for you, and no one else...." Kisses, soft as sunshine over his skin, up his thighs. The mage's hands trembled where they rested...he wanted to reach for Steiner, to hold him, but no such condition could reach them. Tears threaded from beneath his eyelids.

"Please do not weep, Kuja," he implored. "Though you cannot touch me I know the intent of it." He rose, moved to cover the lad's body with his own...to shield him from all. "I love you in any state you inhabit. You will always be worthy to me."

"I c-can't hold you.... They took everything away from me."

"They did not take  _ me. _ And they never shall." Gently, fearful of his strength, he took one crumpled hand in his...carefully pressed his lips there to the knuckles. They still swelled with injury, it had not been properly abated. And yet it could not be explained how Kuja sighed there, mouth quivering with every touch of Steiner's to his skin. "Though they are maimed they are beautiful. I will see any recovery they can make to them." Tenderly he kissed the bruised skin.

The mage slowly drew away, slid his arm over Steiner's neck to drape his broken hand over the muscles. And the knight took his other hand, treated it in kind as he'd done the left, gave the injured form all affection he could. His lad, his beautiful comrade, would never be so harmed in here...anyone to enter would leave the way they came or die.

"...Steiner, you're so hard. Make love to me...."

"With all steam," the human assured. "I shall give you anything you desire." He drew in, kissed that soft, scarred forehead where Bahamut had marred it. Down the slender bridge of Kuja's nose, over his philtrum, to his wetted lips where they worked to the touch. Slowly they parted, revealed the warm depths behind them...traced the tip of his tongue over Steiner's lips.

The seam opened; they filled one another's mouths with the taste of them, a sweet and twining congress of passion. The Genome ground himself upward, softly, dewy and insistent rubbing between Steiner's thighs.... Perhaps he knew what to do this evening, something different from their favored acts of love. He reached for that straining length, stroked upward with his——watched the impassioned gasp and savored it.

"Steiner...Please...N-need you...."

"Yes, my lad, yes," he soothed. "You have surrendered so much of yourself to me in these months. I think it is time I gave you the same of me." Not so difficult a thing; he exceeded Kuja in girth and could certainly endure what his lad had already.

Confusion fluttered over those epicene features. He might not know why Steiner reached for the oils, slowly tested himself as they'd done so often with the fragile form beneath him. Gentle intrusion. Careful stretching.... Not so painful as perhaps uncomfortable, something to grow used to. And the way Kuja gasped so often in his hold, pleaded for more...this could be done. He would know the same trust he had of Steiner if nothing else.

His eyes closed at the reach of oiled fingers, to his prick where it strained upward. Patiently the knight stroked him, gave him enough to urge a lift into those hips, panting to his breaths.... Steiner tucked his knees beneath his heavier frame, carefully lowered himself, aiding the silken length of his lad inside as gently as he could for the inexperience  _ he  _ held.

A groan came to his lips. As new as this was.... It pleased him. The seize of Kuja's teeth over his lower lip...the way his eyes rounded, realizing this  _ indeed _ was different. His breaths quivered in his lungs.

"Th.... This is the first time you've...."

"Yes," Steiner managed softly. "It does not pain me, lad, you are an ecstasy unrealized until now. When we are under far less strain, I shall permit it as often as you desire.... You are warm inside me, so needful. And I trust what pace you would take were your actions freed to you."

"Oh god.... B-before me, there was no one.... I can feel it...."

"I have not desired so much of anyone, Kuja. Only you." He rose, gently——sank further down upon the mage's cock, took it willingly deeper. "I have not the knowledge you do," he confessed, laughing barely there. "I have not even pleased  _ myself _ this way...though if your eagerness for the act is to be believed, I——" He stopped there, suddenly stilled; the Genome's hips had tilted upward and discovered him. That plying angle! His heartbeat quickened, sweat bloomed down his back. "Kuja...!”

_ "This  _ is what makes me love it so much...Do you feel me?"

"Ah, lad. I've never known such an ecstasy.... How do you thrill me this way?" He paused——his lover slowly rose to sit, urging him back.... Retreated from him, for Steiner to settle into the warmth he vacated. Kuja lifted himself over the knight, watched him with gleaming eyes.

"Let me," he whispered, sweetly so. "I will show you the same delight you give me.... I don't think I could've found the nerve to ask, but if you will surrender, I'll see you enjoy it as much as I do....”

Doubting none, wanting all, Steiner reached for his lad.

How beautiful this love. How much he desired it...The mage was hard and more, firm enough to reenter with the most care he could manage. Thighs beneath Steiner's muscled nates drew him up, to brace the mage on either side with the bastion of his legs.... His arms reached, held those dewy hips to him. "Give me your passion, lad, find your pleasures. I am here for your delight."

Those lips, the fervid way they kissed. The fire they started in his blood, countering the pace of those gentle thrusts. The tilt drew a shaken cry to the knight's lips...here, here he loved them, darts of ecstasy finding and searing Steiner's frame, urging his prick upward with building need. And that tail dusted him, teased the length, whispered over the head as he groaned.

"Kuja——Your touch is like naught else, my lad, faster...." And harder besides, the Genome's hips met his with warm, perspiring slaps...The heat of climax began a fuse up his spine. He pulled for the mage's shoulders, drew him in——hands safely held to the pillows, unharmed. Kuja thrust, gasped, lost his pains within his master's frame.... Loved him as passionately as Steiner did him, so often. He shuddered in the warmth, panted—— At last unable, shivering with orgasm in that lock of love.

Such tender need. Just as the first night had been, in the baths.... Drawing close, afraid he'd been unworthy by the way he looked into Steiner's eyes.

"If I could only have braced myself," he mourned, but a finger pressed to his lips. The General shook his head, brows lifting, a grin meandering over his face.

"That is what  _ this _ is for." He slowly rubbed back and forth. "I can take another pace of thrusts...this time, let them be mine. I will have you undone in this bed and crying my name." So much the mage trembled there, clearly ready for more of the ecstasies he loved.

"Oh, Steiner, yes.... I want you inside me again...." The gardens had not had a pleasurable end, but Kuja would fall to sleep in a certain heavenly haze tonight.

Slowly withdrawing from the smaller man, he laughed and winced at once. The lad had nates of  _ steel. _

  
  


-

  
  


"You really are stronger than you give yourself credit for, kiddo." His moping around might be the lone flaw to him...though in the rail-thin adult he'd made, it wasn't unattractive. He managed to look so vulnerable here, when Cid had stabbed right through him and frozen solid.... "The bath's gone cold again. Wanna get back in?"

"Might help," Vivi agreed, shivering. "I just haven't been myself lately, Amarant." Long thin legs. The same weirdly wide hips Kuja had. But with the fact he was the same kind of creature, an actual clone of the Genome himself, no wonder. Power and a huge amount of nerves came together in one golden-eyed little prince.

"Nah." The monk shook his head. "You're all right." Carefully he bore clean water to the tub, that'd been slowly boiled in the cauldron rather than flash-heated this time...Vivi watched his work, eyes hooding there with void-dark shadow. Kinda sexy.

At least he was tall enough to play with. He’d slipped back into his pants and hat, soaking them both to the skin...Amarant crossed the room, tugged the hempen article from his head to set it onto the shelf.

"C'mere. You said it was gonna happen...Why don't I introduce you to the better stuff before you make a bodily commitment? A good blow or two might take the wobble out of your spine." Such a small-bodied guy. He would definitely have to be introduced as delicately as possible.

"Y-Y—Yeah, a-and put it in the rest of me. I'm n-not scared, Amarant, I'm nervous about B-BB——"

"Beatrix can't hurt you," the human murmured. "You know that."

"I kn-know. But what if she hurts Fratley again? What if she kills him this time?"

"We'll be listening for anything and everything. I just gotta keep your mind off the wrongness of the shit you saw today. Lemme have a go, huh? Slip on into that bath and let me pull the stress outta you." Nice to see the way he softened there...shaking a bit less, slowly managing his way to Amarant. "You did a lot of stumbling back then.... Whaddya say I carry you."

"Th-thank you, Amarant. I gotta admit I'm really excited for this...but sorta nervous too. You didn't know this was the first place Steiner loved him, did you?"

"Really?" Amarant eyed the tub. "Well, hell. This thing's about to be real popular, then." He made for the water——tugged Vivi's trousers over his hips, baring him to the room. "Look at you. You're hard as a brick already."

"W—W-Well, you're f-fucking t-t—— _ teasing me,"  _ he burst, in his frustrated struggle for words. Had to be annoying to keep a childhood speech impediment...it was cute, though. Cutest kid he'd ever seen grow up. "If you w-weren't dirty talking me, I might not be so hard...."

"I like it." His purr drew the mage's hands over his eyes; shy to the end. Ignoring the state of his clothes, he settled them both into the tub, for Vivi to warm up and him to cool them both down. Easily he held the mage's ass with one massive hand, explored the dark of his body with the other. Soft, quivery belly, tense chest, stiff nipples he couldn't see but could feel. Pulling those legs around his waist, he dove for one and teased it with his tongue.

"Ah——" What a squeaky, bleating cry. "A-Amarant.... That's g-g——"

"Great, huh?" He grinned against that soft, midnight skin. "You're starting to open up a bit more. I remember when you were so shy you barely even looked at anyone." The other one now——he sucked and nibbled, brushed with the rougher edges of his beard. Vivi gasped and arched in his arms.

"You're starting to drip on me, kiddo."

"Oh god, s-sorry——"

"You kidding? I like it. Even if you can't manage to do a lot of talking, your body sure does. Look at the way you're shivering...." Slowly he traced his tongue down the mage's belly, into his navel; a spurt of giggles told him the party’s pyromaniac was still ticklish. "You're gonna love this."

Yellow eyes lamped in the room. "Amarant.... You're n-not gonna bite me, are you?"

"Now why in the fuck would I do that? That'd be a quick trip to Doomsday. And I mean that, Vivi, if I do anything you  _ don't _ like, I want you to hurt me. Lemme know I fucked up. You don't need to be scared out of your mind by something that's not meant to be scary."

"S-Sure. I promise." Good kid. Maybe he was a bit confused in more ways than one, about his adulthood and literally everything else on Gaia, but he was definitely a good kid. And twenty was a great age.... The best experience of Amarant's life had come when he turned twenty.

Back then things had been simpler, he'd still worked for King——and his son Anchorite had snuck over the side of the balcony to drink with Amarant. He'd been such a terrible influence on that kid. Sweet and powdered, he'd gotten himself and his bodyguard filthy stinking drunk, and dragged them off to an alley.

Vivi wasn't much thinner than Anchorite. But the monk remembered how easily he'd been able to please that wayward dick to coming.... Long fingers trailed the path he'd made with his tongue, slowly touched flesh obscured by shadow.

"Ah...Y-yeah...."

"You're really gonna love this...." Smooth and slow, he breathed a stream of heat onto that arching body, measuring the way Vivi grabbed for the edges of the tub, head lolling back on his neck. Gentle strokes——concentrating there, on the way he shivered between ecstasy and that certain little fear everyone had of their first experience.

He wouldn't be scared of it for long. Leaning in, Amarant felt with his lips and found the mana-smeary head, sucked his way down. And those hands pulled away from the tub, found his dreadlocks to pull him all the closer. Those skinny legs wrapped around his neck.

"F-F-ffuckkk——!" If he got much louder, Fratley would hear him down the hall. One hand rose to tease fingers over Vivi's mouth...urging it open beneath him, that shadowed sexpot pulled a finger in and bit. Not too hard.... More than enjoyable with the way he sucked on it. "Mmhhhtt...."

_ Can't even hold his words straight and he moans my name....  _ What a night. Anchorite had done the same thing, but they'd been hiding in the dark of an alley, both of them tasting dick. Sweet little bastard had sucked for dear life, making the same kind of noise Vivi had.

He'd pulled the noble off him, introduced him to his first dicking. How no one had heard those needy bleats of his, the way Amarant had slammed his cock in that tight, soft ass.... Thinking about it now had a rager building up.

He leaned back, pulled Vivi up to straddle his face. Those hands grabbed for dreadlocks, ears, narrowly missed the hoop in his left one...following the urge, thighs pistoning to him. He loved every minute, worked himself between the monk's lips and muffled those shaky cries in the palm of his right hand. Amarant's left teased under his tail, worked a hole he'd seriously love to lick. And the mage's legs locked around his neck, he shoved his face into Amarant's hair.

"C-can't s-ssstop——" Didn't need to. Not with the way he worked his dick back and forth on a tongue that'd do more than this, spread himself for a probing finger. "Gonna c-come——"

Little warning, not a little amount of cum. He jerked there in ecstasy, filled Amarant's mouth with mana-flavored jizz. Moaned, cried, hugged himself so tight to bliss he covered the human's nose.

Easily he pulled Vivi away, held him there as he shuddered. "Careful, guy. I couldn't breathe there for a minute.... How you feelin'? Enjoy yourself?"

"F-fuck, Amarant, I didn't even know it felt like that.... How do you do it? I mean..., does it taste weird?"

"You don't. But I'm damn sure I would...I'm not as magical as you are. Mana makes everything sweeter these days." Did it ever. If he couldn't bury his dick in that ass, he'd sure fill it with his tongue. And Vivi wilted in his arms there, hard enough for the experience but too shaky to do it himself.

"There's my guy. Why don'tcha let me have another taste, huh?"

"Wh—where——Oh god. Oh, god...." Sweet as hell. He didn't even struggle, just pressed upward as best he could——He was gonna hurt his back.

"Roll over. Lean into the edge of the tub there."

Soft compliance. He turned as carefully as he could, surrendering to the easy lift in two huge hands. "So d-do you want me to—— _ Ooohh...."  _ He got it now, his legs slipped under Amarant's arms as the monk teased his asshole. "Ah y-yeah.... It f-feels weird, but good...H—how do you do that?"

"Personal experience. When I was your age I got to try this out for the first time.... That's a memory I won't forget. You're thinner than he was...definitely a pile cuter. Naive li'l farm boy. I love it." His tongue worked Vivi open, teased him——drew his legs up, feet trying to cling to Amarant's back. Lightly he tickled that soft skin with the point of his beard, savored the shiver there.

"I can s-see your dick. You're really huge...."

"Yeah, well, we gotta ease you into it. Gimme some time to get you good and loose...then I'll dive right in. You'll love it."

"I already d-do, you know so much...Feels great...." He reached past the bath, tried for holding himself up on Amarant's thighs. "I wanna see it, lemme play with it."

"Why not." He couldn't help the laughter threatening to brim up. One hand on Vivi and the other on his laces, he managed himself out of trousers  _ and _ fundoshi, exposing himself to the will and delights of one bashful black mage. Vivi was really starting to cut loose; this was great. Especially with the way he gasped in appreciation there.

"It's so b-big, Amarant, gee whiz...."

"Yeah, I know. That kinda happens when you're seven-foot-five. Not usually hauling a toy when you're this tall...." He had a toy boy pressed up against his face, though. "I gotta tell you, I'm honored to be your first. Hopefully I'll be your last too. I don't wanna let you go!"

"Don't then," Vivi blurted. "Keep me." Oh, the way he worked himself on Amarant's mouth and grabbed for the monk's dick with one thin hand. "You're so hard...D-Did I do this to you?"

"You sure did. I can't get over how sweet you taste." Not that much different than Anchorite, which made him realize the man had to be a mage. If he was still alive, he was floating around somewhere as the archmage of Treno or some shit...Maybe he was even in the arms of someone Amarant hadn't met. Either way, they'd been two airships at night in the end.... Zidane had gotten him fired, and he'd ended up in a bath with Kuja's little prototype, all grown up.

"Gotta wonder how this kinda thing happens."

"Circumstance. That or the best luck in the world, kiddo. Now do you want me to keep teasing, or would you rather find out how  _ that _ thing feels?"

"It'll be a struggle." Vivi looked back, eyes brighter than he'd ever seen them. "But I wanna try it. At least lemme do what you did...I kinda like the idea of drinking you."

"Fuckin' hell, kid." No  _ way _ he was gonna pass that up.

**Author's Note:**

> If you saw the end of Cadenza, you might know this to be what immediately follows. It's probably the largest, or at least the longest, story in the Nocturne series. (As a matter of fact, it's still ongoing.) Having recently withdrawn my novels from publication (an unrelated matter, but I have zero patience for fraud, and two authors under an LLC, pretending to be a legitimate publishing company), I have to do something. As one of the sect of "disabled before age 18 and utterly unemployable in most circumstances", I can't just sit around. Until I get a new publisher for my works, you get fanfic.
> 
> That's also where the lyrical style of my prose comes in. Hope you're enjoying it. :)
> 
> \--
> 
> Kuja wouldn't have come back without at least having to pay some kind of penance. But the eight of his combatants, being the good people they are, wouldn't have let him get killed. Garnet had to flex her diplomatic muscles on this one.
> 
> Obviously, Cid was the outlier. Beatrix hated him as well...here you get to find out why.
> 
> Kuja gives more than a monumental shit about Vivi. That's my headcanon, among other things, and you get to deal with that one. Also, in here, you find out about manamortam and Lich's Heart, two interesting concepts that make this series a bit richer.
> 
> Sisyphus is the auctioneer. I didn't want him remaining unnamed, and I still don't know what his name is or if he was given one. Anybody out there know? I could use the help.
> 
> As always, love y'all for reading! Feedback is helpful.
> 
> \- FlyingPendragon -


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